Hanson Discusses Attempts to Undermine Trump

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, claimed in a Fox News interview that there has been an ongoing and multifaceted effort by the left to dismantle Donald Trump’s presidency.

Recent declassified information from Tulsi Gabbard’s Director of National Intelligence indicates that after Barack Obama’s election win in 2016, his national security team politicized intelligence reporting agencies. On “Ingraham’s Angle,” Hanson suggested that Democrats and their allies in the intelligence community spent three years working to weaken Trump’s legitimacy.

“They aimed for Trump’s failure in all respects—career-wise, presidentially, and psychologically,” Hanson stated. “Their intent was to destroy him. The conspiracy narratives they pushed in 2015 and 2016… ultimately, they failed.”

He accused the left of launching a coordinated strategy over three years to hinder Trump’s presidency, using investigations in an attempt to invalidate the 2016 election results.

Hanson further elaborated that after spending 22 months and $40 million trying to dismantle Trump’s administration, they quickly pivoted to other matters, referring to the early moments of the Zelensky incident. “What we witnessed with Watergate now looks like a minor issue,” he remarked to host Laura Ingraham.

Despite these challenges, Trump won reelection in 2024, and Hanson rejected the long-standing narrative suggesting Trump was lenient toward Russia, calling it entirely false.

“One of their biggest blunders was to create this narrative about Trump being soft on Russia. In fact, during his administration, Putin didn’t venture outside his borders,” Hanson noted, highlighting that Trump’s approach to Putin was more stringent compared to Obama, especially regarding the Nord Stream Pipeline.

“He urged the Germans to avoid the pipeline. Compared to both Biden and Obama, he was much tougher on that front,” Hanson added. He mentioned how Obama, at times, also had his own set of concessions regarding missile defense.

Journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the intelligence community had suppressed significant findings indicating that foreign interference had not altered the outcome of the 2016 election. An internal email referred to “Potus Tasking on Intervention in the Russian Election,” which suggested they were preparing an assessment at Obama’s request.

A new report from the ODNI highlighted how intelligence agencies leaked misleading information to the media, falsely asserting that Russia influenced the election outcome. After extensive investigations, special counsel Robert Mueller found no proof of collaboration between Trump’s campaign and Russia.