With last week’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, the United States has entered an unsettling new era characterized by chronic dysfunction, according to prominent conservative historian Victor Davis Hanson.
The New York grand jury’s indictment of Trump, the first of a current or former president, is “going to open up a new phase we’ve never seen before in the country that political differences are going to be adjudicated out by warring prosecutors,” Hanson told The Epoch Times on April 3.
Hanson, a Hoover Institution fellow, shared his perspective on the left’s strategy to undermine the republic, the simmering anger of half of the country, and the best way that Trump can react to the criminal probes against him.
On March 30, a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Trump in connection with the payment of hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
The former president was charged in a Manhattan grand jury indictment with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, to which Trump has pleaded not guilty. That charge would require Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to prove that Trump forged records to conceal a violation of federal campaign finance laws—a novel legal strategy that some experts think comes at a high risk.
The former president faces three other criminal probes. Special counsel Jack Smith is investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents and his alleged role in interfering with the 2020 election results and the lawful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021. A Fulton County grand jury is also probing whether Trump unlawfully interfered with the 2020 election in Georgia.
‘Lawfare’
The indictment, Hanson said, has “changed politics from the popular vote, ballot, elections to legality lawfare.”“So it’s politics by other means,” he said. “What it means is that almost every ex-president, or maybe even every president, or official could be the target of a publicity-seeking state or local attorney that is in the political opposition.”
If Republicans reciprocate what Democrats are doing, Hanson says, people would see House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) creating committees like the Jan. 6 panel and cherry-picking its members, and state prosecutors in red states such as Florida, Utah, and Wyoming concurrently going after President Joe Biden’s family members.
“The whole country would be dysfunctional,” he said.
‘Silent Revolution’
The Trump indictment comes at a time when many Americans are already discontented with the state of the country and are channeling this into a “silent revolution,” according to Hanson.People are angry that now whenever white people are mentioned, it’s almost always in a disparaging way, he noted.
Their frustration is leading to quiet but sweeping changes in society.
“When people get very angry about what’s going on, they just move around the country, or they go put their kids in Christian schools, or they homeschool,” he said.
“We’re seeing the biggest pushback to the left in our history, but it’s just not violent,” he said. “It’s people—millions of them—all leaving these cities.”
This silent pushback will leave a lasting impact.
“The big news in the next five years is that [the cities] are going to be broke,” he said. “They’re not going to be able to pay their pension funds, their budgets: Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles. It’s incredible.”
The Trump indictment, which may be the first of more to come, has only made people angrier, Hanson says.
Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels occurred 16 years ago. If Trump had stayed as a real estate developer in New York, Hanson said, local prosecutors would have probably let him go.
“It was only when he was a perceived political threat that they [prosecutors] acted,” he said.
“That’s going to get people angry. I think that’s what makes people the most angry.”
But as the left keeps pushing the envelope, Hanson predicts that it will precipitate other kinds of responses.
“When you see what they’re doing at those universities ... they storm in and shout people down,“ he said. ”I think they’re going to be shocked when they see a reaction to it. I don’t know what that reaction is going to be. But you can’t continue like that.”
Left’s Strategy for 2024
According to Hanson, in pursuing this criminal case, the left wants Trump to gain sympathy and secure the GOP presidential nomination, because they believe he would lose in the general election. Indictments or even convictions wouldn’t disqualify Trump from running for the presidency.“They’re not just going to indict him and convict him; they’re going to indict him, convict him, and sentence him. So, what they want to do is to really make him embarrassed,” Hanson said.
“They feel that they still have half the country, and they control the elections. They are going to slaughter him in the general election,” he said, adding that the left thinks they have a better chance to win the general election if Trump, rather than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, were the GOP nominee.
How Trump Should React
Hanson says Trump’s reactions are crucial at this time. The former president’s best move is to “keep calm” and not resort to name-calling, he advised.He predicted that the entire Trump base and the Republican Party would become even more enraged in the event that Trump is named in more indictments.
“Everybody’s supporters get angry. Pompeo, DeSantis, and they’re all, in a generic sense, going to be a beneficiary of that anger, but Trump is the one that can galvanize it because he’s the one involved,” he said.
Hanson says Trump’s messaging should be: “I am a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Here is my agenda. They don’t want to talk about my agenda. All they want to do is tie me up in legal knots, so I cannot be a candidate. And this is not about what I did.
“This is about destroying the political sphere by destroying the candidate.”
Hanson recommended that Trump not call the prosecutor names or smear people. He also advised the former president not to urge people to “go out and protest” because the left would interpret that as a call to riot.
In the event Trump goes “ballistic,” voters may choose DeSantis instead because they want someone who can actually effect change, rather than just yelling about it, Hanson said.
“But I don’t know, it depends on Trump’s reaction and how effective it is,” he said, adding that Trump doesn’t want to exhaust his supporters with protracted outrage.
“Don’t get mad. Get even.”
