Victor Davis Hanson: Biden gave an angry, old man SOTU address

As a lifelong supporter of Israel, my entire career, no one has a stronger record with Israel than I do.

I challenge any of you here. I'm the only American president of Israel in wartime, but there is no other path that guarantees Israel's security and democracy. There is no other path that guarantees that Palestinians can live in peace with peace and dignity. And there's no other path that guarantees peace between Israel and all of its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, with whom I'm talking. So he brought up Gaza.

He brought up the two-state solution. He brought up, he's setting up a corridor where we're going to have no troops on the ground. We're going to bring aid to the shore of the Gaza Strip and we're going to bring it through a corridor so the Palestinians get it. I don't want one innocent Palestinian to die.

None of you do either. But is anyone concerned that we're going to be fortifying Hamas? Do you know that Hamas did with all their money, they made this intricate tunnel system?

The people never got any of that money. Do you really think the people are going to get the food they need? I don't know if he could do this half-assed. Victor Davis Hanson joins us now, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. So Victor, I was surprised he started with Ukraine. And when it came to Israel, I was glad he didn't call for a ceasefire.

But once again, two-state solution. And on his own, he's going to do a humanitarian corridor. Your thoughts? Well, in general, I thought it was a very angry old man get-off-my-grass rant. I think it came across that way. I've never seen a more partisan State of the Union address.

I don't think the American people want to start off with Ukraine. It was a necessary topic, but not the signature topic. He seemed to be accusatory of the campaign speech. I've never seen a president address and get an argument basically with people in the audience or attack Supreme Court justices in the middle of the Congress.

There were a lot of firsts there. The Israel thing is very, I think, dangerous. The idea that we're going to make a port on Gaza, and then we're going to bring American ships in, given what we see with food distribution and the violence it entails. We're going to get into a Kabul-like situation there. And October 7th looms, when he talks about a ceasefire, he didn't call for one, but that's where it's leading. There was a ceasefire on October 7th. Israel did not break the ceasefire. And there would be a ceasefire now if they would just simply turn over the head of Hamas and release the hostages.

There would be a ceasefire. He didn't make that point clear. So, General, it was a very angry speech.

It polarized the nation. I think he succeeded in showing that he's animated, but he's only animated, Brian, when he's angry at his domestic opposition. That's the only thing that brings life into him. Otherwise, he's not angry at the Iranians. He's not so angry at the Houthis. He's not so angry at the Chinese. It's only the MAGA Republicans and Donald Trump and the people who support him that seem to bring him back to life. Here's some of that exchange you discussed.

Cut three. In November, my team began serious negotiations with a bipartisan group of senators. The result was a bipartisan bill with the toughest set of border security reforms we've ever seen.

Oh, you don't think so? Oh, you don't like that bill, huh? That conservatives got together and said it was a good bill?

I'll be darned. That's amazing. So that was just some of the exchange you thought about, and that was the Senator Lankford bill where Senator Lankford worked with Murphy and Sinema to put together a bill. And by the way, after talking to Lankford, the White House had an official in there the whole time was hindering any type of progress, was not very cooperative, not happy with the final product, but when he realized, but they didn't want to sign off on it in the Senate, and that's where he's jumping off. Will he be able to get traction with that?

I don't think so. I mean, Andrew Mayorkas quoted chapter and verse bragging about each of the border items that Trump had initiated that secured the border that he overturned. Biden, when he was a candidate, begged people to surge to the border.

We have 8 to 10 million people who did so. This issue only came to his attention because it's an election year, and his polling found out that his own constituents felt that he had been lacking or wanting in this topic, and it was hurting him. So then he cooked up this bipartisan Senate bill and lured Mitch McConnell foolishly to buy into it. And what it really did was it gave the President all sorts of authorities to exempt illegal immigrants and have a threshold of 5,000 people, which before Biden would have been considered outrageous. And the worst thing about it is we don't need new legislation, Brian. We don't need new money. All we need to do is have the President restore the executive orders that Trump initiated, and there would be a secure border.

Everybody knows that. So the question is, why are they doing it? And they're doing it because they feel that these are new constituents and two cents.

They'll grow government and they'll need more entitlements, and that's always a plus for the left. And then number two, under this new post-COVID change in balloting, where 70 percent of the electorate does not show up on election day in swing states, they feel there'll be less audit and rigor. And a lot of people who should not be voting will be voting. And that's that's why they're doing it. So there's two things.

There's something else going on. And that is now they suddenly on the border they see is a problem. And number two is San Francisco, the state of Oregon, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., all have come out needing to raise it. This is declaring we need to rein in crime time to be tougher on crime. Let's try to bolster up with National Guard troops in New York City, in Oregon, the open air, whatever drug you want thing is not working out. Time to crack down in San Francisco.

It's time to crack down. What's going on here? Is there sincerity behind it or is there a panic underneath it?

I think there's two things going on. One, it's an election year and they see that crime, homelessness and the general sense of blue state implosion is now a big election issue, especially to independents and swing voters. And they've lost them, at least for now. And then number two, I think the bi-coastal left was willing to sign on to all of these things, feeling that their money, their zip code, their influence would exempt them from the consequences of their own politics and ideology.

I can't. They have to go downtown. They park in San Francisco. They park in a parking garage. They get their car broken too. They have to walk over people on Market Street and they get carjacked.

They go into their Walgreens and everything's locked up. So they're now seeing, wow, I thought this wouldn't ever get to me. And now it's got to me and they're angry about it. And so they're trying to pressure Joe Biden and the left to do something about it. And that's what's happening. Is it sincere?

It's sincere in the sense that it's self-interested. But it took a long time for them. It had to get pretty bad. And I think it has to get a lot worse until they'll really do something and stop it. These are helpful measures, but they're not going to solve the problem. Look, it's hard for me to imagine the average American voter, citizen, is actually going to think that Joe Biden wanted to do something at the border and wanted to crack down on crime. When we know he ran, got into office vilifying police officers, never until late, not going back and pushing back hard on defund the police. Cori Bush still says it every chance she can, wants to defund the police. Now we're left with hollowed out police officers, precincts all across the country, including in New York.

I don't think any cop or the cop's family or any type of legal people believe that the Democrats are going to get tougher on crime. And I don't think they could possibly run on it. I can't believe they're trying.

Well, they don't have anything else to run on. I mean, they're going to say that we lowered energy prices and we helped push fossil fuels as a transition fuel. Are they going to say we stored deterrence in Afghanistan, the Chinese balloon?

Middle East, Jake Sullivan said was his quietest portfolio that he inherited. Are they going to say that? Are they going to say, wow, inflation's a little bit restrained, but, you know, 30 percent increase in staple foods, energy, shelter. Are they going to run on that? They don't have anything else to run other than January 6th, abortion, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia.

And that's about it. So, yeah, that speech was just the most disingenuous and partisan speech I've ever heard. And I think it's going to be it may have excited the Democrats that he didn't that he finished the speech, that he was alive. But I think in the aftermath, the quips and the cuts and the video excerpts are really going to not be very well because he just yelled the whole time. They won't find one clip where he was normal and quiet and conciliatory and statesmanlike.

They didn't exist. Eugene Carroll, by the way, you know, the president, the former president had 84 million dollars due today in a bond. He just posted it. He got 91 million. So it's out there and he's OK. Now he's got to come up with 450 million. And what's happening in New York might be it might be enough to close the gap on what Lee Zeldin started.

As you know, he got within five or six points of becoming the next governor of New York as a Republican. But listen to how Letitia James was greeted yesterday. I want you to hear this out on the West Coast.

Cut 36. Oh, come on. We're in a house of God.

First, simmer down. Thank you. I want to thank Commissioner Cavanaugh and Chief Hodgins for that recognition.

So I don't know if you can make it out to the through just audio only, but they rocked him. And it was the FDNY promotion ceremony in the heart of New York City letting Letitia James know we know exactly what you're up to. Does that matter? I think it does, especially the the Jean Carroll was the worst of all, even worse than the criminal suits, because the woman can't remember the date to her dress. She said that proved she was there wasn't in existence. The Law and Order episode was basically where she got her narrative. She praised Trump as her favorite TV show, The Apprentice in 2015.

She made an app about how to break up people's marriages. The whole thing was just a joke. And everybody knew it. And I guess people are starting to see now that if you're in New York, and you're a conservative, and you're prominent, and you're in business, you're going to have to give money to Eric Adams or Letitia James or Alvin Bragg.

And you better be very careful about your social life, because these people are going to go after you. And there's no justice. And so it's really going to hurt New York, and it already has. But at some point, it's not just empathy for Donald Trump, it's worry that they're destroying the whole system of law and jurisprudence. And it's very funny how what they have done, they have made Donald Trump the return to normalcy candidate, the moderate, every one of his positions is considered pretty much where Bill Clinton was on the border on fuel on for. So he's the moderate and Joe Biden is the radical reactionary and crazy person.

And that is true of also their comportment. When Donald Trump gave a State of the Union, he may have been animated, but he didn't do what Joe Biden Joe Biden is the angry, irrational, weird candidate. And so they have somehow and if they keep doing it's going to convince independents that they want to return a return to normalcy policing, deal with the homeless, restore deterrence, make food, you know, affordable energy affordable, stop the crime, stop the 8 million swarming into our cities, and then Donald Trump stands for that. All he has to do is just forget the tweeting and call for unity and he will win. And Joe Biden is not the good old Joe from Scranton.

He is an aberration. I don't think we've ever seen anything like that, that we saw in that State of the Union. And I'll tell you what, I don't like the cataclysmic terms of the one guy, if your guy loses the country's over. But you know, without Sinema and Manchin in the Senate, if Joe Biden finds a way to beat Donald Trump and the Senate does not go Republican, there's nothing blocking the end of the filibuster and that ridiculous, detrimental agenda. There's a danger there.

Yeah, absolutely. They feel that America was flawed at its beginning. It got worse during its maturity and now it's hopeless without fundamentally transforming it. And Joe Biden doesn't know any of that. He's just a veneer.

He's just a construct that this hard left Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders squad, it's not the wing, it's the Democratic Party now, are running via his veneer. And it's very dangerous. And if they get control of the Senate and the House, it's going to be nightmarish.

So I agree with you. And so this is a civilizational election, Brian, that you're there for civilization because we knew it or you're not. And it's chaos versus civilization in November.

And I heard you say something last week that really based my monologue on on Saturday night. And that is, while we're all caught up in the day to day on this race, the comeback of Donald Trump, it's easy. The water gradually gradually got hotter.

You don't realize how hot it is. We're witnessing the greatest comeback in American political history. It's not over. He's got to finish it off. But this comeback is was unthinkable in in years past.

It's unthinkable. In January of 2021, he was written off as an insurrectionist. He was even people in his own party said, we want DeSantis. And he persevered. He was liable. He was indicted. Everybody each time said he'll be in jail, da da da da da.

He'll be broke. And it was almost Nietzsche. And every time they tried to destroy him, he got stronger in the polls. And then he lost weight. He looks more dynamic.

He looks as young as he was when he was president. I don't know any other person who could have taken that personal invective and that damage to his family in this effort to destroy him in every dimension. And he survived. Nixon had that ability after 1962 when he lost the governorship. But he didn't experience a fraction of what they're doing.

The Nixon hatred was not a fraction of what Trump has experienced. Victor Davis Hanson, always educational, interesting to get a perspective. Thanks so much, Victor. Thank you, Brian. Listen to this show ad free on Fox News Podcast Plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.