The Daily Signal - Why Democrat Nihilism Is at an All Time High Right Now | Victor Davis Hanson

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

The only consistent part of the Democrat Party agenda over the last decade is Trump Derangement Syndrome. Their inconsistent nihilism is at all time high: Within the same breath Democrats both mock Trump, saying that he “always chickens out” (TACO) of a fight but decry the U.S. operation to capture Nicolás Maduro and military strikes against the Iranian regime. Presumptive Democrat presidential primary nominee Gavin Newsom says he wants to punch Trump in the mouth.Sen. Cory Booker yells at ICE agents in airports as passengers waiting in line smile in the background. For the first time ever in U.S. history they took a former president to trial. What I'm getting at is there's no consistent message amongst the party of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words” (00:00) Democratic Nihilism Explained (01:29) Iran and Policy Whiplash (02:20) TDS and Unhinged Leaders (05:06) Collusion Hoax to Lawfare (07:39) Why the Party Changed 👉 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

You might be tempted to let Taco Bell's new Lux value menu go to your head. Because 10 indulgences for $5 or less makes you feel fancy. Like you might think you need cloth napkins. Well, you don't. Just use the ones that come in the bag. Don't let the lux go to your head. I'd like to talk a bit about democratic nihilism. A lot of it has to do with Trump derangement syndrome.

There's something about Donald Trump. I don't know what it is entirely. His queen's accent, his appearance, his utter disdain for the media, the academic world, the deep state, corporate boardroom, I don't know what it is, but he drives the left into kind of a state of madness. And you can see it with some of their leaders. They've descended into utter nihilism. There's no consistency. By that I mean the Democratic Party, such as it is in the last 10 years, at least from the advent of Barack Obama, bears no resemblance to what we saw as lately as the 90s, the 92 and 96 Democratic platforms. They seem like Republican platforms. I believe

that together we can make America great again. So what has happened? Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Signal. I'd like to talk for a bit about democratic nihilism. By that I mean the Democratic Party, such as it is in the last 10 years, at least from the advent of Barack Obama, bears no resemblance to what we saw as lately as the 90s, with the 92 and 96 Democratic platforms.

They're almost, they seem like Republican platforms. So what has happened? And I think the answer is they descended into utter nihilism. Take Iran. Last year, when Donald Trump had not yet bombed the nuclear facilities in Iran, but had threatened to and then had extended negotiations, the Democrats came up with a word taco. Trump always chickens out.

And they presented the image of a fickle president that was too afraid to take on Iran, which they said had to be taken on. And then suddenly he did this, and now they're calling him a warmonger that's going to cause World War III and destroy the economy. They have this idea that genocide is being committed by the Israelis at a time of war, but they've said nothing about the Iranian government that slaughtered over 30,000 of their own people. So that there's no consistency. A lot of it has to do with Trump derangement syndrome. There's something about Donald Trump. I don't know what it is entirely. His queen's accent, his appearance, his utter disdain for the media, the academic world,

the deep state, corporate boardroom, I don't know what it is. But he drives the left into kind of a state of madness. And you can see it with some of their leaders. Take Gavin Newsom, for example. Gavin said he wanted to punch Trump in the mouth. He went over to Europe and said that the Europeans had knee pads as if they were performing some, I guess he meant foul sex act on Donald Trump. He's completely flipped out.

He told a black audience that his test scores were low and therefore no different than they. errors, the subtext of that was that you typically as a group have low test scores, and I am a white person who has lower than average. So I don't compare myself to people at large, but only to you. It's a foolish thing to say. From time to time, Cory Booker, Spartacus resurfaced just to scream and yell. The latest manifestation of him is at the airports, where he's yelling and screaming about ice, and you look at all the people's faces, and as they pass the ICE officers who are filling in for the unpaid TSA employees, they're happy. They're delighted.

And Booker doesn't seem to understand that if you take the crazy left-wing protest out of the picture, ICE wouldn't have to have mask on. They don't have masks at airports because nobody is going around taking pictures of them and trying to docks them so that they could be killed or shot by their enemies, especially the cartel. people think they're doing a great thing and so they're completely unhinged and think of what we see

it's just since Donald Trump came back there has been nothing but the Tesla demonstrations remember that remember when Donald Trump had a military parade last summer that there was an alternate one that the left stage that was kind of foul there was the no king's protest

There was those congressional videos where female members of Congress were kickboxing. There were the ones that said, we're going to on-un-F-U word, foul mouth. We had the other congressional and senator making a video where they essentially advocated for military officers to disobey orders. This is all the aftermath of the Trump collusion, even as I'm speaking today, New developments have come out that the Democrats under Barack Obama and later Joe Biden, they spied on U.S. senators, they spied on representatives, they spied on current FBI director Cash Patel, all in an effort to create a hoax that Donald Trump had colluded with the Russians. And then after that was exposed as a fraud, they went right into impeachment.

and then they went right into Russian disinformation in 2020, which was exposed as a fraud. And then they went right into a second impeachment. And then they went into the first trial in U.S. history of a president when he was out of office. And then they did the, what, the raid on Marlago, first time we've had a president's home residence for doing what? doing what Joe Biden did for 30 years, bringing a few classified files out under his own ownership or temporary ownership, but much more secure at Marlago than it was in Joe Biden's garage. So we had the five trials. We had the crazy Petita James real estate trial.

We had the crazy Alvin Bragg bootstrapping a campaign violation that's a federal matter onto a state. We had Fannie Will's Circus in Georgia. We had Jack Smith, who's always in the news for some unethical act that he committed why he had this vendetta against Donald Trump. We had the E. Jean Carroll trial, which was a fiasco. We had efforts to take him off 20. What I'm getting at is there's no consistent message. There's no one in the Democratic Party saying, okay, here is our blueprint for a foreign policy. and it differs from the Republicans, and it's more suited to the American interests.

Okay, we're going to have a new immigration policy, and we're going to do the following, A, B, C, D. Okay, we have crime has risen under Donald Trump. It's gone to historic laws, but it's not because he's stopped illegal immigration. We have a different theory, and here's what it is. Here's our new Green New Deal, 2.0, 3.0. Here it is. They don't even offer a left-wing agenda. It's just nihilism, nihilism, nihilism. There's no coherence. So what happened to them? What happened to the party of JFK and Harry Truman?

Well, we saw what Jimmy Carter did to it. But Bill Clinton tried to restore and go back to the middle. But I think there's been three or four cosmic changes that have accelerated the destruction of the Democratic Party into a nihilist entity. The first is we've opened under a lot of administration, the border is wide open. We have the highest number of foreign residents ever in the United States, 53 million, 16% of the population. And it comes at a time when our balloting laws are never been so suspect that people, whether it's mail-in or early-balloting or voter ID, the Democrats want to, they have one consistent position, get as many people to vote with as few. reviews of their eligibility as possible. And that is a new big constituency.

And that constituency came from places that were poor, autocratic, and need massive inputs of federal subsidies and state subsidies. And that's a viable constituency. We see it with questions of Israel, the new DEI consistency. Constituency does not like Israel. It's radically changed, the Democratic. party. We see it with visiting students. We see it with green card hold. The second phenomenon was globalization. Globalization from basically the millennia until now rewarded people with a seven billion

person market. If you had skills that could cross borders, if you were in the media, if you could open a university in Dubai, if you had an insurance company that you wanted, to have offices in Latin America. If you were a lawyer, global legal terms, anything that dealt with information, finance, media, insurance, you got this, you went from 340 million people, that's today's population in the United States, to 7 billion consumers and customers. And that enriched people along the Blue Coast that had those skills. and they made an amount of money that was staggering,

and that gave the Democratic Party the billionaire class. Go into the Fortune 400, look at the two things, the size of the fortune and the political leanings of the billionaires. They were mostly left-wing, and that enriched the coffers of the Democratic Party through foundations and packs, and gave them these boutique issues from green energy to transsexuality that they pushed down our throats,

all fueled by money, all without popular support. And finally, there's a blue state flight. Their paradigm of high taxes, fraudulent entitlements, lax on crime, over-regulation leads to poor, on safe streets, poor schools, people who feel they can't stay in the middle class, be they're tax too high, they can't afford a home. I'm talking about places, particularly like Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and California,

and people are leaving, and the Democrats are doing what? They're appealing to a shrinking constituency in local and state politics that has no national residency. It doesn't resonate with the national population. So if you don't have, you can't win an election because your agenda either doesn't exist, but more likely, if it did exist, would offend people as a 70th, 30 issue, they being on the 30%, you go hysterical, you go neolistic, you do what the Democrats are doing today. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hansen 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. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember, 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime.

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