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.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I’d like to talk about the assassin’s creed, specifically Thomas Matthew Crooks. He tried to kill, last summer, President Donald Trump, and came within an inch of doing so by hitting his ear, wounded severely two others, killed someone tragically. Young assassin.

We had another attempt in Florida by Ryan Routh. And he was also a disturbed, little older, middle-aged man that almost shot Donald Trump. Had he not been spotted, the next link on that Florida golf course would’ve put him easily within range and he would’ve been killed. But luckily, somebody spotted Routh aiming at Donald Trump for a longer shot and exchanged gunfire, and the would-be assassin fled. And he was apprehended.

We also had this assassin, Luigi Mangione. He was of a wealthy family. He was well-educated and he was angry about unfairnes, perceived unfairness in the health care industry. And he assassinated a UnitedHealthcare CEO, shot him, ambushed him, so to speak.

And then, finally, there was Tyler Robinson. He was the young assassin who killed, assassinated Charlie Kirk.

There’s something in common that’s very disturbing about these people. They were all on the left. Mr. Crooks may have been on the right originally, but from his social media context, he was involved in some trans illusions. He was a furrier, supposedly, these people who dress up as animals and find some kind of sexual satisfaction and emulating animals. Very bizarre people. He was also very critical of Donald Trump. The same was true of Mr. Routh. He had expressed, on a number of occasions, sometimes in association with the Ukraine war, that he did not like Donald Trump.

Luigi Mangione was a hero because he said he was against corporate capitalism and predatory capitalist CEOs. And Tyler Robinson, I don’t know exactly why he wanted to kill Charlie Kirk, but there’s a lot of information that he had a trans boyfriend, girlfriend, and he had a group of associates on social media that despised Charlie Kirk, and he thought he might be a hero.

They all then had something in common. They were people on the left. They were probably mentally disturbed. But there’s two other aspects that I think are pretty disturbing. The reaction to all of these, if you think—people in the United States on the extreme left thought that Mr. Mangione was a hero. We had a reporter interview him and kind of giggle about how attractive and charismatic this murderer was. We had others in the Bay Area of California who were going to entitle an opera after him. He became almost a folk icon.

The other thing, Tyler Robinson, there were people who openly rejoiced about his killing of Charlie Kirk. We had people on the left, and some of them were involved in education, that had T-shirts depicting Charlie Kirk being shot in the neck. We had some people on campuses who actually, as mimes, acted that out, grabbing their throat in a very macabre way, as if that was something to delight over, the horrific shooting on camera in the neck of Charlie Kirk.

So, there was jubilation on the left. In fact, we’ve known almost—it’s kind of like a narrative in our society now that someone someday will stop every day, but someone somewhere will pop up and say that he was happy that Charlie Kirk was killed. Same thing happened with the two assassination attempts of Donald Trump. There was a rejoicing on social media. In fact, some people said, “I wish he had hit him. Aw, it’s too bad he missed.” That type of jubilation.

So, what am I getting at? All of these assassins and would-be assassins were operating—they came out of the creepy shadows. They were operating in a climate in which they felt the bar of the acceptable had been lowered.

If you call Charlie Kirk or you call CEOs or you call Donald Trump fascist, Nazis, terrible people, the worst creature or the worst person in the world, to quote a former speaker of the House who said that wasn’t the worst I could do, that was just a euphemism—when you lower that bar of demonization, then there are going to be people out there with lethal propensities who feel that if they should reify your extremist language, then they will be canonized, they will be considered legendary. That’s one side of the equation.

The other side of the equation is, if you have people in law enforcement or security and they feel the general atmosphere is the people that they’re responsible for keeping safe and secure from these types of threats are somehow despicable, controversial, not quite iconic enough to really risk your life for, then there’s gonna be lack security.

And why was Mr. Crooks allowed anywhere near that rally and to get so close to the president of the United States? And the answer is that the Secret Service, for some reason, not the rank and file, but at the top, did not take adequate preparations.

We don’t know why, but the same thing happened in Florida. How could you have the president of the United States on a golf course and have an amateurish, buffoonish Ryan Routh actually get right up next to a fence and get in close proximity for a shot at the president of the United States?

How could you at a university when you knew that Charlie Kirk was always under threat? How could somebody just openly walk up to a building, climb up on the roof, and then get a direct shot at Charlie Kirk?

I don’t know about Luigi Mangione, but he apparently felt that it would be very easy to just lay and wait for the CEO of UnitedHealth.

But what I’m getting at is that there was a lack of vigilance. There was a laxity that I don’t think would’ve happened, and I’m glad that it didn’t happen, for iconic people on the left, like a Michelle Obama or the Obamas or Hillary Clinton.

I think that there are people in the government and in the administration—state, local, federal—who feel that certain controversial people who are constantly demonized, you can be a little bit more lax, that you really don’t have to be on your guard because these people may have incurred legitimate animus from the public.

And when you combine those two facts, insidious though they are, that A) there are people out there who are unstable, who feel that they will be rewarded, no matter how deranged or demented that idea is, rewarded psychologically by taking the life of a controversial conservative figure, and 2) there may be people within the apparat who are responsible for the security who also feel that the person that they’re supposed to protect may be not deserving of the excellent level of protection that is usually accorded to other people, then you have a recipe for disaster, and we’ve seen it happen.

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