‘My Gosh!’ Victor Davis Hanson Tells Mike Rowe When Trump Makes Him ‘Cringe’

Conservative podcaster Victor Davis Hanson revealed the moments in which President Donald Trump has made him “cringe.”

Speaking Thursday with Mike Rowe for Rowe’s The Way I Heard it podcast, Hanson discussed how the president can quickly pivot to someone who is “transactional” in his relationships, as opposed to “vindictive.”

Then Rowe asked if Trump had ever crossed the line into “cringe,” prompting a long reply from Hanson:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: They keep thinking he’s vindictive. He’s not a vindictive person. He can say terrible things, but the next moment he’s transactional.

MIKE ROWE:  When do you cringe or do you?

HANSON: I do when he said, the Romans it’s a very famous phrase and early uh [sighs] church doctrine but also among the Romans, deculum ni bonum de mortui.

Say nothing good it doesn’t really, it translates better: say nothing unless it’s good about the dead. And they mean that about the recent dead.

So when he said that about Rob Reiner, I got very angry about that, and I said he shouldn’t have done that.

I know that Rob Reiner had been very vicious to him, but he had just died, and he had died tragically by his own son.

And then there was a very controversial – my, I’m very close to my oldest daughter and she has a disabled child with a very severe genetic defect.

And one of the manifestations of that defect, it’s called Smith-Magenis. It’s a little bit worse than Downs.

And she’ll do this, grab her face or she’ll go like this [gestures]. And he, during that, I remember I know you remember it so much, during that campaign he did this to a reporter [gestures]

And his supporters and he said he did it to other people just like this, but it came across that that person had a – and I thought, my daughter called me and was very upset – and I looked at it 20 times and I never really knew but I don’t think you even want to get in that situation where you make fun of someone.

Those are the things that have made me cringe when he makes fun of a person’s — he said the other day about the premier of Ontario. Yes, Ontario, [Doug] Ford, who’s kind of heavy.

And he said, “Well, he’s known as a slob.” You could say a thousand things, but you’re going to have to deal with him. So, I didn’t understand why you would call him a slob like that.

And I think he he understands that he does that sometimes. And, uh, I know that he didn’t continue that with Rob Reiner. He was defensive after that. [sighs]

Some of the things he says are cruel, but we forget that – what he said about John McCain, I objected to.

When they said something. He was signing a book and he said, “John McCain doesn’t  approve. I would prefer our people were not taken prisoner.” or something to that effect.

ROWE: Yeah.

HANSON: But he doesn’t, the subtext of that is John McCain had just said the day before that Trump brings out all the crazies, all the people who are Trump supporters.

He called them crazy and another time I think he called them hobbits or something. So it was a tick but still that was a wrong thing to say.

Watch above via YouTube.

Jason Cohen contributed to this report.

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