Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

This content was recorded by Victor Davis Hanson prior to his Dec. 30 medical operation.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. In the past, I’ve characterized as, Walter Russell Mead, most famously [said], that Trump’s foreign policy is neither interventionist, surely not nation building, nor is it isolationist, as the Left accuses. It was something called Jacksonian. That is, “no better friend, no worse enemy.” “Don’t tread on me.”

At various times if people took advantage of the United States’ desire to live in peace, and they started to push their luck, then we would hit them, overwhelmingly. Sort of what we saw with the two Americans that were tragically killed in Syria. Then there was an overwhelming retaliation.

But I think there’s a quirk to Jacksonianism, a subset. And I would call the Trump Foreign Policy, the Vise Policy. V-I-S-E. Like a vise, that you clamp down on something. By that, I mean, rather than intervene or even use kinetic force, he has another alternative when he sees a renegade country.

Most famously, we saw Iran, that when he came into office, the first thing he did was get back out of the Iran Deal, put........

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