Victor Davis Hanson: 'Blue state' governors' lockdowns put America in 'untenable situation'

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Reaction from Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of 'The Case for Trump.'

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Historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson told "The Story" Friday that Democratic governors of states like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Illinois are creating an "untenable situation" by being slow to lift lockdowns instituted to counter coronavirus.

"We don’t think more people will die because of the lockdown versus exposure to the virus," Hanson said, mimicking the thought process of some Democratic governors, "We have to be absolutely certain that nobody gets the virus and dies."

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As a result, he said, residents of those states are prevented from paying into the system with tax money, which is needed to fund entitlement programs.

"We have soaring welfare costs and we have soaring entitlement costs because people are locked in at home, Hanson said. "But we want other people to go out in the red states, and we want to criticize you for being reckless, but your people are going to have to provide the labor and the services and the capital to create wealth and give it to the federal government, so it can turn it around and give it to us and bail us out while we sit at home and suggest that we are your moral superiors.

"That is an untenable situation."

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Hanson said the entire dynamic is "incoherent" because people cannot "stay at home" and yet demand the government print money to "run entitlements while we are not working."

"[T]hat money has got to come from somewhere," he said, "and it’s going to come from the places that are actually risking and going out and working and providing it."