Why Is Victor Davis Hanson Considered to Be a Trump and MAGA Historian?

Victor Davis Hanson has been a “commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics.” He is a “professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno,” a fellow in “classics and military history at the Hoover Institution,” and a “visiting professor at Hillsdale College. 

Hanson is known for his work on war and ancient Greece, and he recently wrote a history on President Donald Trump. 

In her article published at Deseret News, Jennifer Graham reported on a discussion with Hanson. The first thing that Hanson made clear his relationship with Trump. He voted for Trump, but he writes as a historian when he writes about the POTUS. In fact, he intentionally does not talk with Trump about what he wrote in his book. He gives Trump “the same dispassionate eye” as he does when “writing about warfare in ancient Greece.”

“My interests are not in defending or attacking Trump but in offering an explanation of why he did not disappear from the political scene and likely will not for quite some time,” Hanson writes in his latest book, “The Counterrevolution,” which chronicles what he calls Trump’s “wilderness years” between presidencies and the factors that led to his political resurrection after the 2020 defeat.

Hanson calls it the “greatest political comeback in American presidential history.”

… Hanson … sees Trump’s fall and rise as a counterrevolution – a reversal of liberal ideologies that had seized the country – and says that although Trump might not be the hero that people wanted, he was what the country needed to change course.

“He’s done some fundamental things that no one else can do, and he doesn’t care what people say about him,” Hanson said in an interview with the Deseret News.

When Deseret News asked about Trump’s favorability ratings, what happened, and how it affects what Trump wants to accomplish, Hanson replied:

I think that was a result of his decision, not necessarily to go into Iran and deal with that problem, but more importantly, there was the expectation by both his adversaries and also his supporters that the operation would be similar to his taking out, in the first term, of (Hasem) Soleimani, or (Abu Bakr) al-Baghdadi or the Wagner Group … or the bombing last year in June of the nuclear facilities.

And I think the administration underestimated two things. First, that Iran is the largest area in the Middle /east; it’s the size of Oklahoma and Texas. It has the second-largest population, 93 million. And it’s invested essentially a half-trillion dollars in a nuclear industrial military complex. It’s a vast country, and it terrified everybody….

So I think they underestimated the challenge that was posed. They thought they would do some damage and then these people will be rational. That didn’t happen.

I don’t think he was every going to win any of the left, but the fall in the polls I think reflects three things: The war is too long for the MAGA base. There are some defection there…. And I think the independents were for the elimination of the threat, but they wanted it, like the other operations, quickly.

Then there’s the affordability question; for five months, (the administration) did not address these issues. They didn’t address those defections and the economy.

When asked about a “forever war,” Hanson reminded his listeners that the war was “not 20 years in Afghanistan, or eight or nine.” However, the US is in a “test of wills with Iran,” and Iran thinks that it can “delay, delay … and drag it out.” Trump will either hit Iran hard and leave “containment to the Arabs and Israel and our bases in the area,” or forget about it and emphasize

the economy. “Iran is losing $100 million a day. They don’t get the message out that the embargo is in place, the sanctions are in place, the debanking is in place,; they bombed all the bridges to Russia and China. There’s no import, no export. And they’re just about at the brink of bankruptcy.

When asked where the situation leaves the president politically, Hanson said, “The only thing that is saving him right now is, he has been given a number of gifts that he didn’t expect. Thirty-nine of the last 41 midterms, the incumbent president and party in the White House have lost seats – (but for) Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Frankline Roosevelt, as I remember.

Nobody anticipated there would be more red-state legislatures gerrymandering than blue states, so (Republicans) could pick up three or four seats. We never thought the Supreme Court would outlaw racial gerrymandering; they may pick up one or two seats from that. In addition, people were talking about the Democrats getting a whole lot of money, but the Republicans have raised more. So they’re going to have a lot of money, and that’s aside from people like the so-called tech oligarchs, like Elon Musk, who have pledged to put hundreds of millions of dollars in.

And then finally, he was given a great gift by the prominence of these democratic socialists. Everybody thought they were kind of an isolated phenomenon, but they’re in the news, people like Hasan Piker and Zohran Mamdani.

Ironically, I think there’s more pressure on Trump now, because now people are saying you could win the midterms, you could hold it, if you get out of Iran. That’s the dilemma they’re in.

When asked about the economy, Hanson explained that most people do not follow the Iran war “because it’s not really a war.… What they’re following is affordability of houses, insurance, food, fuel. Donald Trump promised to lower them.” Even though inflation is half what it was during the Biden administration. “They thought Donald Trump was going to come in and not just have lower inflation, but lower the price. He’s saying the inflation is a lot lower (than under Biden), but that’s a bad argument. It’s almost impossible historically for a president to get into a deflationary cycle and lower the prices of his predecessor.”

In answer to a question as to how overcomes the problem of high prices with Iran continuing, Hanson said, “It’s going to be very hard.” He thinks that the US might hit Iran really hard for a week or two to knock out Iran and cause them to cave. Then announce that they will leave Iran as it is and work on affordability getting the price of fuel down.

There is more to the interview, and you can find it here if you are interested in reading more.