Michael: What if the biggest story of the 2016 election wasn't about emails or rallies, but about geography? Kevin: Geography? You mean like, electoral maps? Michael: Not just maps. I mean a fundamental split in the country. Not red states versus blue states, but the coasts versus everyone in between. And what if one side’s open contempt for the other is what truly elected a president? Kevin: Huh. That’s a provocative way to frame it. It takes the focus off the individual and puts it on these massive, invisible forces. Michael: That's the explosive argument at the heart of Victor Davis Hanson's book, The Case for Trump. Kevin: And Hanson is a really interesting figure to be making this case. He's not some DC political pundit. He's a highly respected classicist and military historian from Stanford, a National Humanities Medal winner. He even says he's never met Trump. Michael: Exactly. He comes at this as a historian analyzing a phenomenon, arguing that to understand Trump, you have to understand the two Americas that created him. And that's where we're starting today.

Michael: Hanson's central thesis is that for decades, a chasm has been growing between two Americas. On one side, you have the prosperous, progressive, globalized coastal cities—New York, L.A., San Francisco. On the other, you have the interior of the country, the so-called 'flyover states,' which have been hollowed out by globalization and feel culturally disrespected by the elites. Kevin: Okay, that's a powerful idea, but it can feel a bit abstract. Does Hanson make it personal? How does this 'divide' actually show up in people's lives? Michael: He makes it intensely personal. He lives in the Central Valley of California, a rural, agricultural area. He tells this story about his own farm. For years, he experienced constant property crime—break-ins, vandalism, copper wire theft from his wells, often by local gang members. It was a persistent, grinding problem that the authorities seemed unable or unwilling to solve. Kevin: That sounds incredibly frustrating. Like a low-grade state of chaos. Michael: It was. And the elites, from their gated communities in Palo Alto or Beverly Hills, would lecture people like him about being compassionate on issues like illegal immigration, while being completely insulated from the consequences. So, Hanson, a historian of ancient warfare, did something very practical. He built a wall around his property. Kevin: He built his own wall? Michael: He did. And he says that after the wall went up, unlawful entries onto his property dropped by 90 percent. Kevin: Wow. So for Hanson, Trump's talk about 'building a wall' wasn't just a political slogan; it was a direct, if crude, answer to a problem he was living every day. Michael: Precisely. It was a metaphor made real. And it connects directly to that feeling of being looked down upon. Hanson argues that the rage that fueled Trump's base wasn't just about economics; it was about dignity. It was a reaction to being called 'deplorables' by Hillary Clinton or 'clingers' by Barack Obama. Kevin: I remember those moments. And the book mentions others, right? That Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Melinda Byerley, who wrote on Facebook that "no educated person wants to live in a sh**hole with stupid people." That's just… incredibly revealing. It's not just a political disagreement at that point; it's pure contempt. Michael: It’s pure contempt. And Hanson even quotes the conservative writer Kevin Williamson, who wrote in the National Review that these "dysfunctional, downscale communities... deserve to die." When that's the message you're hearing from both the left and the right establishment, you start looking for someone, anyone, who is willing to fight for you. Kevin: Even if that person is loud, uncouth, and breaks all the rules. Michael: Especially if that person is loud, uncouth, and breaks all the rules. Because his very crudeness is proof that he's not one of them.

Michael: And that burning anger leads directly to Hanson's most controversial idea. He suggests that to fight this level of establishment rot and contempt, you couldn't send a polite, traditional politician like a Mitt Romney or a Jeb Bush. You needed a different kind of weapon. Kevin: This is the 'tragic hero' part, right? I have to admit, Michael, this sounds like a pretty generous framing. Are we really comparing Donald Trump to a figure from a Greek tragedy or a classic Western film? Michael: Hanson argues yes, in a very specific way. He doesn't say Trump is a noble hero. He compares him to figures like Achilles from the Iliad—immensely talented but driven by ego and rage—or more pointedly, to the gunslinger Shane from the classic Western. Kevin: Shane? The guy who rides into town, saves the homesteaders, and then has to leave because he's too violent for the peaceful world he just created? Michael: Exactly. The town needs his capacity for violence to survive, but his very nature means he can't be part of the civilized society he saves. Hanson argues that Trump’s supporters saw him in a similar light. His willingness to 'counter-punch,' his disregard for political correctness, his 'crudity'—these were not bugs, they were features. They were the necessary, if toxic, tools to fight a corrupt establishment that polite people couldn't or wouldn't fight. Kevin: But what about the argument that his behavior was unprecedentedly awful for a president? That it lowered the dignity of the office in a way we'd never seen before? Michael: This is where Hanson the historian comes in and really pushes back. He argues that the idea of a 'golden age' of presidential character is largely a myth, created by a compliant media. He goes through a list that is pretty shocking when you see it all together. Kevin: Give me an example. Michael: He talks about Woodrow Wilson, who suffered a debilitating stroke and was essentially incapacitated for the last 17 months of his presidency, a fact his wife and doctor completely hid from the public and Congress. Or Franklin Roosevelt, whose paralysis from polio was so carefully concealed that most Americans never saw him in a wheelchair. He was also terminally ill when he ran for his fourth term, a fact his doctors helped cover up. Kevin: And it goes beyond health issues, right? Michael: Oh, absolutely. He details John F. Kennedy's rampant sexual misconduct inside the White House, with aides procuring women for him, all while the press corps looked the other way. Or Lyndon Johnson's extreme vulgarity, like conducting meetings from the toilet or exposing himself to staffers. Hanson's point isn't to say 'Trump is good.' It's to say that the idea of a pristine, dignified presidency is a fantasy. The real difference is that Trump's flaws were public, loud, and broadcast on Twitter 24/7, not hidden behind a veil of establishment secrecy. Kevin: So the argument is that the outrage wasn't about the flaws themselves, but about the fact that they were no longer being hidden? That Trump broke the unspoken agreement between the president and the press to maintain a certain image. Michael: That's the core of it. For his supporters, his transparency, even his vulgar transparency, was more honest than the polite hypocrisy of the past.

Kevin: Okay, so if Trump is this disruptive force, this 'gunslinger' riding into town to clean things up, then the establishment—the town elders, so to speak—wouldn't just stand by and let it happen. This brings us to the 'deep state' and the Resistance, right? Michael: Exactly. Hanson calls it the 'Ancien Régime'—the old order, a term from the French Revolution. He argues that from the moment Trump was elected, an unprecedented, coordinated effort began to delegitimize and remove him from office. And it wasn't just protests. Kevin: He talks about 'assassination chic,' which is a pretty dark term. Michael: It is. He documents how it became normalized for celebrities and public figures to joke about or fantasize about violence against the president. Kathy Griffin posing with a mock-up of Trump's severed head. Robert De Niro saying repeatedly he wanted to "punch him in the face." Snoop Dogg's music video where he 'shoots' a clown dressed as Trump. Hanson argues this rhetoric, which went largely unpunished, created a climate where any action against Trump felt justified. Kevin: That stuff was definitely out there. But what about the 'deep state'? That term gets thrown around a lot and can sound like a conspiracy theory. What's Hanson's actual evidence? Is it more than just disgruntled employees? Michael: He's very specific. He defines the 'deep state' not as some secret cabal, but as the permanent, unelected bureaucracy in Washington—the upper echelons of the FBI, CIA, DOJ, and other agencies—who have their own agenda and are resistant to outside change. His evidence isn't just conjecture. He points to the constant, strategic leaking of classified information, like the verbatim transcripts of Trump's private phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. That's a felony. Kevin: And that's not something that just happens by accident. Michael: Not at that level. Then there was the anonymous New York Times op-ed, written by a self-proclaimed 'senior official' who boasted about being part of a 'resistance' inside the administration, actively working to "frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." Hanson frames this not as heroism, but as a 'slow-motion coup.' Kevin: That's a heavy accusation. Michael: It is. But the centerpiece of his argument is the Steele Dossier. He lays out the timeline: the dossier, a collection of salacious and unverified rumors, was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. This opposition research was then given to the FBI, which, despite its dubious origins and the fact they couldn't verify it, used it as a primary basis to obtain FISA court warrants to surveil Carter Page, a U.S. citizen and a volunteer for the Trump campaign. Kevin: Hold on. So a political campaign paid for a dossier of rumors, which the FBI then used to get a warrant to spy on their political opponent's campaign? Michael: That is the chain of events Hanson lays out. He argues that this wasn't just political opposition. It was the weaponization of the nation's most powerful intelligence and law enforcement agencies against a political candidate, and then a sitting president.

Michael: Ultimately, Hanson's book isn't really a simple 'case for Trump.' It's a case for understanding the deep, simmering fractures in America that made him possible. He argues that Trump was a symptom, a brutal antibody produced by a system that had left millions feeling voiceless, forgotten, and openly disrespected. Kevin: So the takeaway isn't necessarily about liking Trump or agreeing with him, but about recognizing the forces that created the demand for a figure like him. That feeling of being a 'stranger in your own country' that Hanson describes. It's a powerful and unsettling idea. Michael: It is. And he argues that the establishment's reaction—the intense resistance, the media coverage, the investigations—only proved the point for Trump's supporters. They saw it as confirmation that the 'swamp' was real and that Trump was, in fact, the only one willing to fight it, no matter the personal cost. Kevin: It makes you wonder, have those fractures healed since he wrote the book, or have they just gotten deeper? Michael: A question that feels more urgent now than when the book was first written. It forces us to look past the personality and at the underlying societal issues. What do you all think? Have you ever felt that coastal-interior divide Hanson describes? Let us know your thoughts. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.