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Rough transcription of Hour 1
Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 87738138118773813811. Well, we will be watching the United States Senate because we have individual conservative senators over there. Who have. Objected to the deal that was made in the House. I do not trash Kevin McCarthy. But I don’t agree with the Dear Leader. That is, I think they should have spent a few more months on this because it wasn’t going to sink. On the other hand, I don’t know if they count votes. I don’t have to count votes. You know, one of the things that’s interesting is the original deal that they sent. To Biden. That is the one that they passed. It wasn’t the deal that. Conservatives like us originally. Supported. It was a watered-down version. You realize that Mr. Producer? I dug into this. So, who’s purer than pure? And there were several not a lot, but a few conservatives who voted against it. One or two. But it wasn’t the end all and be all that we were promised. Why? Because he got to get the votes, that’s why. But he got the votes. Still. Still, it wasn’t the version that we were promised. It wasn’t the be all and end all that we were promised. Why? Because this process. I don’t care what bill it is, who the speaker is, who the majority leader is. I mean, I care a lot, but I mean, that’s fundamentally not how this is going to be addressed. In the end. It won’t be Congress. Unfortunately, the system is too broken. And if people don’t recognize that. And they’re going to keep banging their heads against the wall. And take cheap shots at this guy or that guy. That’s the way it goes. Moreover. As I said. And I will mention specifically what will the conservatives in the Senate do about this? The House is one body. You know, it’s fascinating. I’m going through researching, reading today. I don’t see a lot of pressure. On the Republican senators to do anything. Have you noticed that, Mitch? You agree? You’ve looked to, right? Almost nothing. I don’t get it. Theoretically, this thing could be stopped potentially in the Senate. I’m not even hearing a lot of noise. I see the same looped interviews over and over and over again. And so we’ll see. Other than just voting no. They have certain rules in the Senate which can allow them to slow this thing down. And any conservative senator is free to call me my buddy Mike Lee, my buddy Ted Cruz, Rick Scott. Who else is there? Rand Paul. Now they know and I know under the unique Senate rules test, a vote no doesn’t mean a damn thing because the votes are there. So there are more opportunities, really. If they feel this is awful. And if they agree with me that it ought to take a few more months, I really believe that. Then they ought to stop it or at least try to slow it. I haven’t even seen a press event where they’re all gathered and talking to the media. Have you seen that, Rich? What is the conservative wing of the Republican Party and in the Senate? We’re all the columnists. Oh, the Tweedy Birds. I see no pressure placed on any of these guys to do anything. And yet the rules are such where they might be able to do something, at least slow it down and inform the American people. They’re not doing it. This is the strangest damn thing, really. We go to a bicameral congress. And you would think we only have one body. Well, we only have a majority. Yes, but they have rules in the Senate, parliamentary rules that are beneficial to the minority. Not so in the House. Not some in the house. Have you heard anybody talk about this today? Have you seen anybody write about this? The weight of this whole thing. It’s on the house. Where we have a tiny majority. And by the way, there are liberal Republicans in that caucus. Liberals. Who you and I detest. There are rhinos who you and I detest. And so I would ask you. If you’re going to pull the votes together, it seems to me in the Senate you have a better opportunity in some respects. I looked at the roll call votes on this to Tim McClintock. Tom McClintock, I have great respect for voted for this. Claremont Institute days. Jim Jordan voted for this. Thomas Massie, solid libertarian, voted for this. So did several members of the Freedom Caucus. Including Warren Davidson. I point him out because he was the first candidate the Freedom Caucus endorsed to get elected some years ago. Marjorie Taylor GREENE. And then I stopped looking, quite frankly. So there’s them. Should we now boot them out of the Republican caucus? Are they sellouts to? Then I looked at some of the others. You have, as I said, yes, Newt Gingrich, Steve Moore. You have the editorial pages of The Washington. Times. The New York Post. Ben Domenech, who’s great. Steve Cortez, solid supporter of DeSantis, was a supporter of Trump. Kevin Haslett. Had a senior economic position in the Trump administration and Americans for Tax Reform. Hardly a liberal organization. They all supported it. I did not. But they support it. So. I just wanted to lay that out there for you. It’s not so black and white. I use my own thinking process on these things. I don’t just, Oh, well, no, we’re not going to do that. And I don’t believe in that. So we have this bill that’s over in the Senate. And the one senator I hear about is this guy, Tim Kaine from Virginia. He’s kicking up a lot of dust. Why? Because he wants to kill the pipeline provision in the debt ceiling deal. Which is one of the great provisions in the bill. So he introduced a amendment today to strip a provision, as national media reports, in the debt ceiling bill, that would expedite the completion of the Mountain Valley pipeline. So what this bill does, among other things, is it. It streamlines infrastructure building, whether it’s roads. Tunnels. Bridges. From an average of seven years because the environmentalists throw up obstacles, they sue you in one agency, then move to the next. That was streamlined. But it also streamlines the approval of energy projects. So that’s good, right? Well. Top Republican negotiators explained in a call with reporters that expediting completion of the 303 mile natural gas pipeline is a strategic win. Democrats on record Voting to limit. Judicial review, even of conventional energy projects. This is important. So tonight, Tim Kaine is furious. Says it’s extremely frustrating because there could have been other vehicles to do it. I mean, doesn’t have to go into the debt ceiling bill. So there you have it. Senate Majority Leader Schumer, Senate Minority Leader McConnell are in support of the deal and have emphasized it must move through the chamber quickly. If amendments are approved, it will go back to the House for another vote, making an already difficult timeline nearly impossible. So why is it the pressure on McConnell by Republicans? Okay. The house things over. Why isn’t there any pressure, any condemnation of McConnell? His so-called leadership team. Why isn’t there any pressure on conservatives in the Senate? But particularly McConnell. Mike Lee is proposing an amendment. To strike Section 265. From an act. Let’s see. That currently empowers the Biden administration, director of OMB, to unilaterally waive a provision referred to as the administrative PAYGO. Yeah, that’s bad news. Because that requires the administrative agencies to offset the expense of any regulatory discretionary administrative action. Rand Paul’s proposing the amendment. It would place caps on total on budget outlays that decrease by 5% each year, which are enforceable by sequester. Okay. And will the Republicans support both of those amendments? Are they going to receive pressure from anybody? No, they’re not. It’s just assumed that that’s game is over. Forget it. It’s too bad. Well, we don’t have the numbers in the Senate. Well, we don’t have the numbers in the House, but that doesn’t mean you don’t put the pressure on and state your opinion. In my view. I’ll be right back.
Segment 2
It’s a real mix in the Republican Party and it is very strange in some ways. We have people breaking off, creating their own views of conservatism and rejecting conservatism, hyphenated conservatism even more. We have a new sort of theory. It’s not new at all or really pre-dates World War Two and then in the 1950s, with Taft and conservatives and so forth, more of an isolationist view, although they’ve always denied that it’s isolationist. And and then we have the the hawks. And by hawks, I mean the. Interventionists who’ve never seen a conflict that they don’t believe that we should be involved in. And so the labels get thrown around and the names get thrown out because it’s easier to win discussions that way. I’m not interested in winning anything. I’m interested in you hearing the facts. Although I always do win Mr. Produce. Now, that said, what am I talking about? Well, here’s Lindsey Graham on the floor of the Senate today. Now, I know a lot of you are saying, Oh, it’s Lindsay, but Lindsay Graham represents a viewpoint that is not completely rejected in the Republican Party. And look, you can support a strong military and you can support a forward acting national security doctrine. Without being an interventionist, quote unquote, and without supporting endless wars, quote unquote, and without being a neocon. Was Reagan, a neocon. When he fought the Russians, that is, the Soviets in Angola. Nicaragua and El Salvador. Pushed them in. In other places across the world. No. Forever wars, and he defeated the Soviet Union. I think that was pretty good. Don’t you think? It was very good? You also grew the economy over the course of his two terms by some 25%. Economic growth like this country hasn’t seen since the Industrial Revolution. And, by the way, the Industrial Revolution. I know we’ve been raised to hate the monopolists and even the populists hate the monopolists. I’m not big on monopolies myself. But I am big on history. There’s a reason why Rockefeller was the richest man on the face of the earth, and he’d be the richest man on the face of the earth today. He looked at his. We looked at his wealth based on. Inflation. It’s because he created. The energy system that we use today. Fossil fuel system. Without his capital being invested the way it was. It wouldn’t have happened. It was very disparate. Industry, very regionalized industry. The whole notion of pipelines, that was his genius. The whole notion of using. Natural gas, which was being burned off. That was his genius. Made possible the automobile. In this country. Or steel. Nobody had the capital. Except Carnegie. And I can go on and on, certainly improve this country. The Industrial Revolution and beyond. Doesn’t mean they were great, doesn’t mean they were perfect, means that they delivered for us many, many things that would not otherwise have been delivered. So in some cases it’s good. In those cases it’s not, but in some cases it simply is. I’ll be right back.
Segment 3
Lindsey Graham on the floor of the Senate today. Cut forego. We’re going to cap spending at a level that we cannot expand the Navy. And in the same period of time, China is going to go from 310 ships over a ten year period to 440. Let’s stop right there. This is one of my problems. As well. With the deal. And yet I asked one of my conservative friends in the House. I said, you’re not you’re not an isolationist. Why? Why do you support that? And he said, Well, if we can offset it with domestic spending and I told you this. I said, But they can’t because the left won’t allow them and the liberal Republicans won’t allow that. He said, Well, then we’re not going to increase it. I said, But that doesn’t eliminate the threat from communist China. I mean, come on, man. To quote Joe Biden. Communist China is on the rise. They’re not messing around. We’ve got to build up our military. To be able to defend ourselves properly. You know, when Reagan left office, we had a 600 ship Navy. Now we’re under 300. He says 310. We’re going to be under 300 ships. The Chinese are going to be over 400. All right, Go ahead. As money for the army, less ships for the Navy is slow because we make less money for the Marines. Less money for the Army. Less ships for the Navy. Does that concern any of you out there? Had you even heard any of this? It’s true. We conservative is now concerned. Not concerned about this. That’s a new type of conservatism to me. We’ve seen this before. As they said, pre-World War two 1930s. The United States was hardly isolationist. In the enemy got stronger and stronger and stronger. And conservatives in America. And not just conservatives, but liberals, too. The nation didn’t want to know from anything. Churchill. Despite his protestations that Hitler is building, he could see what’s happening in Germany, could see what’s happening in Italy before he could see it all. He was dismissed as a kook. And he was right. Go ahead. It conflict. Not a penny in this bill to help Ukraine defeat Putin. They’re going on the offensive as I speak. And we need to send a clear message to Putin that when it comes to your invasion of Ukraine, we’re going to support the Ukrainians to ensure your loss. If we don’t do that, then we’re going to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. And of course, this is considered controversial. It wasn’t ten or 20 years ago, but it’s controversial now. That is, to support an ally. Against an invader. And of course, China, Russia, Iran. In North Korea. There’s your access. A SARS. There’s your modern access and the prelude to World War Three, and there is going to be a World War three. And I apologize for being the messenger on this. It’s already started in many ways. China is on the move. China’s building its arsenal. And they’re not going to act until they think they can literally defeat us or cower us or cut off our economic navigable areas and routes. They’re already in our hemisphere. And while the location of the Monroe Doctrine so as Russia. Our good friends. The Russians. They’re in our hemisphere in a significant way. I mean, it’s unbelievable. And they’re already in the Pacific. Our Pacific. The west coast of Africa. Why are they doing all this? To defeat Taiwan. Now. It’s nothing to do with Taiwan. Has to do with us. They’ve building and building a strong alliance with certain countries. South of our border, including Brazil. Nicaragua. Other countries. Venezuela. This is serious stuff. And yet. And yet we are not able. We are not capable. Of fighting a two front war. Which used to always be the test of military spending was enough military spending as a percentage of the budget. Is much lower than it’s been in the past as a percentage of GDP. It’s much, much lower than it’s been in the past, and it’s going to be worse. So this is one strike also against this deal. No, I don’t think McCarthy sold us out. Think he got what he thought he could get. Well, the Republicans that he has. Just a matter of judgment. As I said, they hung on another month or two. We weren’t going to go broke. The money keeps coming into the federal government. Doesn’t stop. Keep paying your taxes. Businesses keep paying their taxes. Keep getting tariffs. And whatever keeps coming into the. It doesn’t stop. Now Mike Leigh was on Fox and Friends. Today is a very close friend of mine. We don’t always agree, but we often do cut three ago. We knew that our best shot was with the house putting out something good. And so the fact that they put over had put across the line after having proposed something so good and not standing their ground on that, something that’s anemic, deficient and falls far short of what they claim it did, makes me not at all excited about supporting this bill. Moreover, there is this this sense out there that this thing is going to cut spending automatically by 1%. But they wrote it in such a way, it’s actually going to encourage more spending, bigger omnibus or continuing resolution at the end of the year. It’s going to result in more spending, not less. You know, it’s hard to know what to believe anymore. I read the bill. I hear my coach I trust who’s one of the smartest people I know. Then I hear other people saying, No, that’s not correct. You’re hearing the same thing. What do you even believe anymore in terms of interpretation of this thing? Spoke to Jim Jordan. He doesn’t agree with Mike Lee, doesn’t mention Mike Lee by name, but he thinks it does those things that Mike Lee doesn’t think it does. I mean, it’s pretty interesting. But there you have it. But this isn’t going to fix anything anyway, folks. In fact, the Republican proposal, the conservative proposal, that wasn’t going to change the trajectory either. I agree that your fight where you have to, you fight on every on every battlefield and so forth. But the fact of the matter is, if we really want to fix things I talked about this at length yesterday and I’m going to talk about it at length on my FOX show Sunday. The fact of the matter is that. None of this is going to stop the trajectory. By the way, Mr. Producer, is a footnote. Open your microphone, would you? Do I promote my podcast a lot? You should do more often. You don’t. Do I promote it a lot? Not really. Do I promote it every day? No. Do I promote a once a week? Not really. Maybe twice a month, hopefully twice a month usually. It’s promoted twice a month, maybe three times a month. Not often. So somebody writes a letter. To Westwood One and says that I’m busy promoting the podcast. Now, this is a letter from somebody who represents somebody who endlessly promotes their podcast. Such liars. And they’re brews for cruisin the cruisin for a bruising. Fine by me. Fine by me. What are you talking about, Mark? It’ll become clear eventually. It’ll become clear eventually. It’s just very strange. But then again, I’m dealing with very strange. I’ll be right back.
Segment 4
Well, you heard Mike Lee. He opposes it because it spends too much. Lindsey Graham, he opposes it because there’s not one penny extra for defense in the face of rising communist China. And there is a perfect example of how difficult it is to cobble together votes. So if Lindsey Graham’s complaint was met. There would be more spending. If Mike Lee’s complaint was met, there’d be less spending on defense. Now we have Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy, who says, Look. This is what we did. Cut one. Go. I’ve been thinking about this day before my vote for speaker because I knew the debt ceiling was coming. I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done. That we would literally turn the ship. For the first time. In quite some time. We’d spend less than we spent the year before. Tonight. We all made history because this is the biggest cut and savings this Congress has ever voted for. And it’s not that we’re just voting for it. This is going to be long, $2.1 trillion. And there are a number of analysts who say that’s correct. And then there’s people who say it’s not. But you know what? We’ll know in a year, won’t we? We don’t have to guess. Went on a year. The effort to destroy this man’s character, though I’ve had about enough of that. They didn’t give him any credit for what he could become as a speaker. First, they told us it wouldn’t happen. It did happen. Then they say he’s a sellout. It’s hardly a sellout. You may disagree with what’s what’s happened here, but he’s hardly a sellout. And then you can hear the Democrats attacking him. Then you look at the vote tallies. I’ve heard this said 70 or 71 Republicans voted against this. Now, I watched that vote as it was coming. And what did I see? As I recollect, there were 40 or 45 votes right out of the box that were against it, and then when it was obvious it was going to pass. Some Republicans sitting on the sidelines jumped in and voted against it. In other words, if their votes were needed, they probably would have voted for it. But seven years. So voted against it. And what was it, 149 or 150 voted for it. So there you are, split. Their split. If you’re sitting down at a table and you’ve got to figure this out, that’s what you’re dealing with. And. My complaint again is if they had been a little bit more patient. They let the phony deadlines a Yellen put out pass. One already did. June 1st. It already was already going to pass without there being a problem and looked at how, among others, the Reagan administration. Was able to use the available funds when the government closed shutdowns. I think that would have worked. But then again, he didn’t have the backing of the Senate Republican leader. I mean, he was there. He was pretty much standing on his own. And apparently he’s very popular with you. But I don’t see where the the attacks are going to do anything. I mean, he says it’s a first step. Great. We’re going to watch the second step. I heard Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller, a sellout to. Everybody a sellout who doesn’t agree. With some of these people that it said how that works. The fact of the matter is Stephen Miller, who’s done an enormous amount with his legal group, done an enormous amount of good on immigration issues, I’ve known him a long time. He’s a big fan of Kevin McCarthy’s. I didn’t even know this. He said he’s known him seven years. He used to work on the Hill. And he said on TV last night, I think it was on HANNITY. This is a first step. It’s not everything we wanted, but it’s good. So you this is what you’re hearing, mixed signals. And that’s why I’m here to tell you. That we fight wherever we can. But this fight. It’s not what’s going to get us our country back. Even if everything. Was cut the way we wanted it cut. There’s absolutely nothing on Social Security, Medicare. We’re talking about 11% of the budget, 11% of the budget. And when you look at the GAO reports and the even the OMB Treasury Department reports and the CBO reports and I, I mentioned them to you last night. We’re headed for a cliff. And this vote yesterday has nothing, almost nothing to do with it. The amount of money we owe in these so-called entitlement. Areas and the amount of money we own, the so-called untouchable areas, the rest of the budget. It’s so monstrous. It’s so unbelievable. But it’s hard to see how we get out of this. Even if. Matthew Rosendale of Montana was in charge of this process. It wouldn’t be enough. It literally wouldn’t be enough. Because the system is completely broken. The funding system, the borrowing system, the spending system. So to some degree, I watch this stuff and just shake my head and I’ll be right back.