Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats turned California from 'paradise' to 'purgatory'

Historian Victor Davis Hanson said that Democrats in California took "paradise" and turned it into "purgatory," amid the ongoing riots in Los Angeles. 

"They took paradise and made it into purgatory," Hanson said on the Monday edition of the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "And people are leaving paradise to go to places that are not nearly as scenic or beautiful."

Protests and riots have broken out across Los Angeles in response to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents' arrests of illegal immigrants.

In response to the protests, President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 National Guardsmen to the city, despite objections from California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

"We haven't had a statewide Republican official since Arnold Schwarzenegger," Hanson said. "It's a one-party state, and they own almost everything they do. So, when you have the highest gas taxes in the United States, the highest income tax, the fourth-highest sales tax and the highest number of people above below the poverty line, and you have one-third of everybody on federal assistance... you can really see what's going on."

Hanson said the wealthy in California are immune from the outcomes of high taxation because it doesn't phase them.

"They're taxing, taxing the middle," he said. "The wealthy are immune from it. They don't care."