September 7th, 2023

On Thursday’s Mark Levin Show, President Biden and the Democrat Party are destroying immigration and the economy. Democrats are telling us this is one of the greatest economies ever. The idea that you have to pay more for fuel, utilities, and food is your imagination because Democrats tell you they created a fantastic economy, and if you don’t believe it’s your fault. Don’t worry about your IRA’s and mutual funds. The Democrat position on the border is that it’s secure and now all of a sudden sanctuary cities are upset. This is Biden’s fault, he is destroying America – citizenship doesn’t mean a thing anymore. What happening on the border the destruction of communities, the growing crime, and impoverishment is a Democrat Party-created disaster. Later, school choice is more important now than ever, we can’t have any more pretenders. Nikki Haley can’t run on a big school choice plan because she didn’t have one. Chris Christie didn’t lift a finger for school choice in NJ as Governor. Also, Vivek Ramaswamy was the media and polling favorite last week, now this week it’s Nikki Haley. The polls are meaningless, you have to vote for the candidate you believe is best to lead the country – not who can win or who’s leading in the polls. Don’t be misled by talking heads on TV. Afterward, Sen Tom Cotton calls in on the latest effort to undermine Donald Trump and prevent him from returning to the White House and his take on the January 6 sentences. Finally, thanks to Mark’s listeners WLS AM will air the radio show live! And thanks to Fox News and Mark’s viewers Life, Liberty and Levin is expanding to 2 days a week, Saturday and Sunday. The first show of Life, Liberty and Levin got a review from Media Matters and as usual, they got it all wrong.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla

The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.

Rough transcription of Hour 1

Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. First, I want to get a little business out of the way. Be weird if I don’t. Chicago, Illinois. The great WLS. I’ve been on the air 21 years and I’ve never been live on WLS. I mean, I’m live. But you understand I tried many different things over the years. It’s a fantastic station. And starting Monday, we will be live on WLS from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.. And I want to thank the management on that station for doing what they’ve done. Old management on that station. They wouldn’t budge. I wasn’t lobbying. I never said a thing. But it’s going to be fantastic. The nation’s third largest city metropolitan area now will be live. I also want to thank Fox. I want to thank you folks. We’re expanding Life, Liberty and Levin We’ll continue to run our show on Sunday just as is. And we’re going to do a second one now on Saturdays. A fresh show, brand new show. So that’s two different shows. I’m going to try and use the same or similar format. So it’s what you’ve gotten used to? Just more of it. And this is only possible because of you. I don’t lobby for these positions. I didn’t ask WLS, but I’m thankful they did it. I didn’t as Fox for the Sunday show. They came to me. I’m thankful they did. I didn’t ask for the Saturday show. I’m thankful they did it. They have a fantastic lineup on Saturday and Sunday and throughout the week. I don’t try and muscle my way in. I don’t backstab anybody. I just do my thing. I’m not positioning myself. I’m too old for that. I’ve got too many accomplishments. I don’t have to position myself. And there will be a day when I leave these airwaves, when I leave television, when I lay leave digital TV, and I start writing books. Hopefully by choice. My choice. Hopefully not God’s, but you never know. In the end, he does make the final decision. I am deeply blessed. I know this. I’m deeply blessed by you folks. It’s always been my belief. That if he can bring intelligent discussion to the airwaves, whether it’s radio or TV and now, of course, digital. Then people will want to listen. They’ll want to engage the quotas. I’ll quote them. But, Mark, you know, you have this sometimes, You know, you can be lawyer. Well, that’s my personality. That has nothing to do. With the substance. And my personality. A lot of people find it intriguing, compelling, entertaining, funny. That’s the nature of being a public figure. I don’t even view myself as a public figure. Honest to God, you can ask any family member. I remember that speech that. George sees card game and pattern the pattern movie. In 1971, we watched that movie probably 50 times. My favorite movie. And at the end of the speech, which is the beginning of the movie. Matter of fact, I might watch it this week and I’ve just talked myself into it. He says three words that have never left me. 13 years old when I watched this. Never left me. Glory is fleeting. Glory is fleeting. It certainly is. Well, my day comes by choice or by demand. And the good Lord himself. Oh, I’ll be a fleeting memory. For most people, it’s just the truth. There is one great old time radio host many decades ago. He said. 500 years from now, most of us didn’t exist. What did he mean by that? He meant the people closest to you are the people you touched the most. Could be family, could be friends, could be a large audience of people like you. But 500 years from now. Nobody is going to remember. Even family. Most of us don’t remember a family from 500 years ago. We can’t even track it back. Amazing. There’s probably a thousand human beings who lived, give or take, who are remembered. Most of them are genocidal murders, but also. People who’ve written ideas have had profound views. Exceptional statesman. They remembered. But there’s billions and billions of us who won’t be worried. So I say this to tell you that my ego is in check. My ego has always been in check. It doesn’t mean I am not passionate about what I believe. I am passionate about what I believe. One friend once wrote that. Lake, which he said was a passionate intellectual. So we stole their line and we used it in an intro. I think that’s pretty much right. When I did my first show on Fox and I want to thank them again. Suzanne Scott, Big Cooper, Megan, Tara, David, the whole crowd. Josh? Know who else to thank? Everybody but mostly you in the audience because none of it would matter, quite honestly. And how many times, as I said, if you don’t watch, I’m not going to keep doing it. But I don’t I didn’t lobby for that. And I didn’t lobby for this. I did my first show with the great Walter Williams. That’s who I wanted to talk to. I got to know him a little bit. He got to know me. We really hit it off. He was a chain smoker. He lived his life the way he wanted to live. It is best, best friends with a great time. A soul doctor. Soul. Both of them started out as Marxist. Both of them ended as libertarians. I wanted Walter Williams on my show. Thomas Sole was unable to travel across the country as it was, and Walter Williams was able to travel from Philadelphia to Virginia quite easily, and he was very excited about it. I was very excited about it. First guest. We got a review from Media Matters. Media Matters is full of IQ Evil Soros Sycophants, an organization that fails, in my view, a false tax and just my opinion. Because it’s obviously a Democrat front operation that tries to destroy Fox and conservative talk radio. But claims to be a charitable organization. Bipartisan, nonpartisan. And I made a statement at the beginning of the show and and the person who wrote this, Matt, what is his name? Matt Gertz. Nobody knows who he is. Nobody ever will. It won’t take 500 years to forget him. Take about 30 seconds, he says, preventing the country from experiencing the imperial declines of Rome and the United Kingdom by preaching small government principles. Sarhaddi Gaulle for a cable news program with a 10 p.m. weekend slot. And unfortunately for Levin, Fox, his audience, and perhaps the Republic, the show’s first episode was a glacial slog. Levin and Walter Williams spending the hour trying to pass off warmed over right wing talking points as coins of wisdom. 2013. The Daily Beast suggests that Levin was the most powerful conservative you never heard of. You’ll provide the intellectual architecture for the Tea Party movement with racially charged commentary, stressing the purported radicalism of the Democrat Party and the need to return to the small government roots of the nation’s founding. In its first episode, Lavin largely focused on well-trod territory. There was a constitutional convention shout out for the Levine Heads who might be turning tuning in. And while those less familiar with his personal of war were watch him and Williams, they never disagreed during the interview. Actually, why we did Williams was not a big fan of the Convention of States and Baneful Talking Points. This is the show for you. If you think the height of political discourse is someone stating that more people are killed with knives, there were rifles before asking without irony, What do you want? Knife control. And this is the kind of inane, low IQ mocking commentary that we get all the time from the radical left Marxists. Life, liberty and Livin on Sunday, thanks to you, is the highest rated every week. Prime time Sunday evening show. On cable news. We beat CNN and MSNBC combined. We tend to be one of them. By three times the number, the other one by two times the number. I just can’t remember. And I don’t tell you these things I’m telling you now. Just so you know. And we’re right in the teeth of football, aren’t we, Mr. Peters? Sunday Night Football starts at 8:05 p.m.. Life, Liberty and living starts at 8 p.m. Eastern time. The same thing will happen on Saturday nights. There’s Saturday Night Football often. And we will be on 8 p.m. on Saturday. The Saturday show substantively will not be the Sunday show. They are separate fresh shows. And I intend to keep similar formats, if not the same. If you continue to watch. If you don’t continue to watch. And I won’t continue to do it. You got people do shows five days where nights a week on Fox, I’ll be doing two. That’s all I want to do. In fact. I was perfectly happy with one. But I always view these platforms as an opportunity to advance the cause. And what is the cause? Our survival is the cause. Our survival as a free people. As free individuals. Who get to make choices about whether we want to be successful or not. And so I want to thank you for watching. I want to thank you for listening to this show, because during baseball season, in almost every major city in the nation, the time of this program is right up against baseball. And yet you come to this program in some really big cities like New York, where I’m on ABC, where I started out on ABC. Which has gone through several iterations of ownership. I’m the only host that goes up against the Mets and the Yankees. We looked into this four nights a week. That’s four shows out of five. Those hoes can’t even show any numbers for that. We show very strong numbers for that. And there aren’t many hosts that could survive that. Now, how do I know that? Because ABC in the past tried many different hosts. They tried. Many different formats from 6 to 7, 6 to 8, 6 to 9 show. We do one hour, 2 hours, 3 hours. Should we do local? Should we do national? Should do sports talk. Political talk. This talk. That talk. I do. People talk. I try to make the complicated as understandable as possible. That’s what I do. There have been seven efforts on a competing channel in New York. Seven. To defeat this show, Every kind of show imaginable. They can’t do it. The only thing that would defeat this show is the removal of the show. And then people will learn the hard way that there’s really nothing that can replace the show. You know why? Not because of me, but because of you. You won’t stay. You all stay. All this to say. I’m enormously grateful and thank you. And now we’re going to move on. I’ll be right back.

Segment 2
Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a lot that’s in common with what’s going on with immigration in this country and what’s going on with energy in this country. An individual who happens to be in the Oval Office, his Politburo that’s advising him and taking action. The entire Democrat Party regime is destroying both. I don’t want to hear this as mayor of New York City, yelling at the top of his lungs and refusing to mention the word Biden. Biden you, Jack. That’s the problem. Biden or Hochul, whose name sounds like something that’s stuck in my throat. I’ll come. Another one. These Democrats are pathetic. Meanwhile, they’re destroying our energy infrastructure every day. So I want to talk about both of these when we return, because they are all affecting you bigly.

Segment 3
You know before I get into this immigration and energy issue, because I think they’re tied in a way. Pardon me for getting into a different issue First, education, because during the break, I’m watching Fox and Nikki Haley has a educational plan that she is going to unveil much closer. Glenn Youngkin is now talking a little more presidential. You know, wants to talk about parents rights that got him elected Governor Chris Christie. Of course, he’s all over the map as most rhinos are. He says he’s trying to get the attention of folks who want to be in the middle. I told you, the rhino in the middle of what? Oh, that’ll get a lot of things done. And I’ll save the Republic. You know, Vivek Ramaswamy a week ago, two weeks ago was the favorite of the media. Nikki Haley today is the favorite of the media. And they drag out these polls that show CNN the Nikki Haley would beat Biden by six points. Ron DeSantis would be even. These polls are utterly meaningless. They are so contemptible. That’s what lazy news organizations do. You know how many polls showed Ronald Reagan losing and losing badly to Jimmy Carter? All of them. All of them. Till we get. Pass the nomination. And into the fall. Then things turned around. You had to vote for the candidate who you believe is the best to lead the country, that quote unquote, who can win. The polls have no idea who can win. The talking heads on TV. How many more times are you going to be misled by them, particularly the ones who’ve been around like half a century, like the architect and don’t know they’re, you know what? From the. You know what? They should at least have to have their records placed up there so we can all see them. So don’t participate in the prediction game. You know, I like so-and-so, but I don’t like it. Well, then support so-and-so, because then he or she might win. On this issue of school choice. Nobody has been involved in school choice more, certainly not on many more in the media than I. Then the group I work for and with for decades, Landmark Legal Foundation. The first battle of school choice was in the state of Wisconsin. Governor Tommy Thompson had signed a very limited school choice bill, but he signed it at the behest of it and he supported it. Good. I mean, it was good that he did it. Of a late lady named Polly Williams, who has a black state representative at a milwaukee. And a Democrat. She was our client. That’s where it all started. And landmark legal. With her as the client. And one or two other legal groups. But I can speak of my own experience. Including with the current president of Landmark Legal Foundation of fantastic lawyer and litigator Pete Hutchison. We had a sue at the lowest court level of the state, the state circuit court level into the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. We were opposed by the ACLU. We were opposed by the ACP were opposed by the NEA, by the WGA. The state affiliate were opposed by the entire Democrat. Mob. We went to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin twice. And then we won. It was a modest program. A couple thousand kids in the ghetto. Who could now go to a public school. I mean, a private school. Then we had to litigate again. Could they go to a parochial school? Or for that matter, any religious schools where to litigate that. This took years and we want. Then there were federal challenges. Same groups, same opponents. When all the way to the Supreme Court. Not once, but twice. And we want. This was a decade worth. Of litigation. Of court battles in state and federal court. Two Supreme Courts, the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the U.S. Supreme Court. I know what I’m talking about when I talk about school choice. And the original idea for school choice. Came from Milton Friedman. The great Milton Friedman. It was his idea first. School choice, including homeschooling the great Mike Farris in Virginia. Really the father of the homeschooling movement. Just a great guy. I love the guy. He litigated and they litigated and they litigated in state court and they litigated in federal court and they litigated in the Supreme Court. When you have somebody like Christie say, I just want to appeal to the middle and to the moderate, you don’t accomplish things like this, America. You don’t accomplish things. By being in the middle. In the middle of what? What a useless reason to be president of the United States, to be in the middle. We have a Democrat Party that seeks to destroy this country. It’s destroying our energy sector, it’s destroying our sovereignty, it’s destroying our schools, its destroying our courts. It’s destroy law and order. And I can go down the list and somebody wants to be in the middle. Somebody wants to be in the middle. They don’t want to be Churchill. They don’t want to be Thatcher. They want to be in the middle. Some people in the middle claim that they’re Ronald Reagan. They claim to be great leaders. And yet, when you look at the records, they haven’t been great leaders. Modest gains as governors, even in Republican states. I am deeply thankful that Glenn Youngkin won this state. Because this state was gone over the edge and it still might. Maybe it’s a flash in the pan. Much like. Christie was a flash in the pan and New Jersey. Christie didn’t do anything to build up the Republican Party. He despised the conservative movement, even though he was slobbered all over by National Review and the Wall Street Journal. And Youngkin hasn’t done anything to build up the conservative movement. He’s a decent guy. Wonderful guy. Comes across that way. He’s done some things, but he hasn’t done enough. You only get to serve one term here as governor. Four years and that’s it. I listen to Nikki Haley. She’s going to put out a big plan. She can’t run on her big school choice plan because she didn’t have a big school choice agenda. Oh, there’s some. They all support some. But the only one running is DeSantis. He and the former governor of Arizona, Doocy, literally put in the most ubiquitous that is far reaching. School choice programs, ideas, school competition programs the nation has ever known. Ever. He doesn’t have to put across a plan. I mean, maybe he wants to for the federal government, but he already broke the teachers unions in Florida. That’s why they hate him. That’s why. And by the way, that’s why these quisling billionaire Republicans, you know, I hate billionaire Republicans. There’s a handful that I like, a couple I like a lot. But for the most part, they are gutless wonders. They are quislings. They’ll get behind the candidate, the candidates slow, and it’s not working. A tool to radical on abortion. Too radical on Disney to wreck. In other words, the guy is fighting the battle of the culture. It’s right in the middle of this state in Disney. It’s in his school systems. In the billionaires run. You know why? Because they are useless. The useless. Not all of them. Certainly most of them. So now the flavor this week and maybe the flavor for the next few weeks will be Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley’s been. Throwing bombs left and right at everybody. And she’s drawn the attention. Of the establishment Republican. Some quislings, some pseudo conservatives. But I keep saying what was what is her record for eight years in South Carolina? He can give us the best things you ever did. And run on them. So we can all understand what they are. When it comes to abortion. She sounds great. She’s not very pro-life. That’s the truth. We got to work with this one. We got to work with that one. We started 15 weeks. That’s better than nothing. But she’s never really advanced the ball on life at all. When and where. So she’s a commentator. School choice. I would ask the people of South Carolina, do you have a vibrant, extensive school choice program where almost any kid can participate? No, you don’t. Now, why is this important? Because the radical Marxist Democrats and their unions have taken over the classrooms. They are telling you parents that you have no role in the education of your children. You have no role. And what kind of explicit sexual exposure your children receive, whether in books, whether in lesson plans, whether one on one. And you have no right to know about it. And if you don’t like it, go to hell. So school choice is more important now than ever, Ever. There cannot be pretenders to school choice. There cannot be people who talk the issue up, but do don’t follow it up. Certainly not well enough. We had landmarks said and we got it out there in the in the public. That school choice is the civil rights issue of our generation. This used to be in our brochures, our publications. People have picked it up. There’s only one guy running who has actually done anything about it. It’s two scientists now. Interestingly. Donald Trump was very interested in this. He spoke to me about this. I spoke to my wife, Julie, about this. This is something we’re very interested. And he decided at some point in his presidency to make this a big issue. It’s very difficult for a president to break the back of state and local teachers unions. He’s the head of the federal government at the head of. Every government. Big, small and otherwise. But he made it a bigger issue than any president before him. Any. Any. And they funded grants to promote it. Where they possibly could and so forth and so on. Chris Christie did nothing for school choice in New Jersey, didn’t lift his finger. Didn’t lift the finger. All right. Now, when I come back, I want to jump back into this issue. Of illegal immigration and the war on our energy sector. And how are the there different sides of the same coin? I’ll be right back.

Segment 4
Oh, my God. We’re not going to get to the immigration energy issue, too, after the top of the hour. But it is very, very important because this is in part destroying your lives and this is in part intentionally intended to destroy your left. This isn’t a natural disaster. This is a Democrat Party. Biden regime made disaster. And no matter where you turn, no matter where you look. It’s everywhere. The destruction of the civil society, the Republic. By the way, I see my dear friend Newt Gingrich is really obsessed with an old book from Meaning McCarthy. And I’m like, wow, Newt, take a little. You know, what does that call when you wake somebody up is that’s something source. I forget what it is smelling source That isn’t what they call it. Little smelling source. No, please. Selling. But he called smelling salt. Whatever. Smell something. I’ll be right back.