Mexico. Part Two Trump has four, far bigger, gripes with Mexico. They are more compelling than his Canadian squabbles. One, suddenly Mexico’s trade surpluses are an astounding $170 billion or more. Indeed, it grows second only to China’s! And it is predicated on assembling Chinese materials into finished goods that can thus brazenly escape tariff […]
Victor Davis Hanson Canada. Part One Trump has been waging a running verbal battle with Canada. And it is based on four of his own pet peeves. One, he despises Canadian Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in the past has openly sided with Trump’s political opponents in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
Victor Davis Hanson After the recent dustup with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in the White House, Volodymyr Zelenskyy should have taken a lesson from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Like Ukraine, Israel too is similarly in an existential war—in fact against four adversaries. And likewise, it is dependent on U.S. financial and military aid.
3) Pentagon. The military was declared not to be chronically short by 30-50,000 recruits each year—simply by readjusting the required manpower levels downward. Do we remember the monthly sound-off of a retired admiral or general (Mark Milley was the latest example) screaming that Trump was a “fascist,” and during the Trump presidency, that he was
Victor Davis Hanson Given the leftwing hysterical responses to all of Trump’s thirty-day-old initiatives, let us remember what just a few months ago were the alternatives. 1) War. The Biden non-strategy for the Ukraine war was to provide enough aid for Ukraine to continue, but not enough to win and incite nuclear Russia. There was
6) Why did Putin go into Ukraine in 2014 and 2022? We have mentioned the role of the Obama hot-mic appeasement and Putin’s later invasion. We still do not know the U.S. role in the Ukrainian street violence of 2014 that drove out the pro-Russian but legitimately elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Nor do we know
3) A War to the Last Ukrainian? The U.S. political dynamics of war and peace have been utterly reversed. Supposedly hawkish and bloodthirsty Republicans have never supported the leftwing desire to bleed out Russia by fighting it to the last Ukrainian. Joe Biden rarely if ever deplored the horrific carnage on both sides. Donald Trump
Victor Davis Hanson There are lots of hysterias, lies, and untruths about the Ukrainian envisioned “peace” and “settlement.” Here are a few: 1) The Donbas and Crimea misinformation. It was never the policy of the Obama administration—during which its foolish Russian “reset” blew up when Putin invaded the Donbas and Crimea—to retake either Crimea or
Victor Davis Hanson Democrats mostly see Americans merely as a conglomeration of separate tribes: blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, gays, women, transsexuals, and upscale bicoastal whites. In their tribalist views, all the groups are seen as more loyal to their own tribal members than they are either to other tribes or to America itself. In what
Victor Davis Hanson In their limited self-reflection, the Left keeps looking for reasons why they have lost the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court—and both the Electoral College and popular vote. In lieu of confronting the frightening truth that their message is largely antithetical to the values and wishes of the majority