November 13th, 2024

On Wednesday’s Mark Levin Show, one of the greatest Supreme Court litigators ever has passed away – Ted Olson. He argued Bush vs Gore 2000 recount case. If he believed something needed to be defended, he, did it. Rest in Peace. Later, the Democrats are trying to steal the Senate race in Pennsylvania and not one media outlet will talk about accepting the results of an election. Marc Elias is trying to steal this seat, just like he did with Al Franken in Minnesota. Also, President-Elect Trump needs to succeed. His appointments are there to do what Trump needs them to do, and he deserves our full support for all his appointees. The media will try to reverse course of the election by trying to kneecap Trump. Afterward, the culprit who leaked Israel’s military plans to attack Iran has been found.

Photo by Alex Wong

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. I want to begin with something I wasn’t planning on starting with it, but I just learned about it shockingly enough, apparently to happen some hours ago. And that’s the death of Ted Olson. Ted Olson was probably. No, not probably one of the greatest Supreme Court litigators ever. Ever. I knew him for quite some time in the last number of years. You know, our friendship wasn’t altered in any respect, but we didn’t really keep in touch. Just so much going on in everybody’s life. He was involved in a few cases I didn’t necessarily agree with, but this is the way he was. If he believes something needed to be supported and defended, that’s what he did. You might remember in Bush versus Gore, he represented Bush and he defeated David Boies in the Supreme Court. That was a big deal. He worked in the Reagan Justice Department for a very good period of time. And when he left there, he went into private practice. He was a hugely sought after litigator. Now. We worked together a lot during Iran-Contra. When that matter broke. I represented former Attorney General Ed Meese when I left the Department of Justice. He represented President Reagan. It was very brutal litigation that most people didn’t know about. It was litigation in secret. It was a very nasty law. The Independent Counsel Act, as we called it. And we were up against these extraordinarily powerful independent counsel in this case, Lawrence Walsh. Landmark represented me. I was the lead litigator. And I did it and I wanted to do it for free. And that’s what we did. Walsh was coming after Reagan. He was coming after George W Bush. He was coming after Ed Meese. He was coming after Donald Regan. He went after Weinberger, which wasn’t a traditional unethical act. Just looking for scalps everywhere. I must have spent the entire summer. I forget which year. At the courthouse in Washington, D.C. We were not allowed to. Actually access the grand jury information that Walsh had used, in my view, unconstitutionally. And I raised it in the secret litigation and they ruled against me. 2 to 1 was a panel. And I said, Well, by God, we have a right to respond to this. And I want to respond to and I need to use that information. The court said I could on a very limited basis. They would not allow me to take any copies of the grand jury information. I literally and back in those days had to sit at a table in Judge Central’s office, a circuit court judge who was on the panel. In his conference room. And pick up this, you know, rather sizable microphone connected to this tape recording machine and read from the transcript. And it got so bad I actually had sour balls, ears popping in my mouth because my throat was so raw. And I did it for three months. We filed a motion. I wanted access to other people’s information and so forth, and the court ruled that I could actually talk to the other lawyers, but I could not talk to the president’s lawyer, Ted Olson, which was bizarre. Ted Olson was free to call anybody he wanted to. I was free to talk to anybody I wanted to except Ted Olson. And yet I needed to know what information they had in order to write the response. The report to the report. So I called Ted, who was an old friend of mine, and I said, Hey, Ted. Yeah, I’m not allowed to contact you about information related to this case, but you are allowed to contact me. I said, You understand what I mean? He said, Yes. I’ll see it tomorrow at noon in my office. So he had asked me to meet with him. And we wrote a response, very extensive response to the in a Benny counsel’s report. He didn’t indict Ed Meese because Ed Meese didn’t do anything wrong, and he did indict a number of people. But he had indicted Caspar Weinberger. It was outrageous. Not for actually committing an offence, but for obstruction. What did he do? He had sent all of his notes to the National Archives. Which have been placed in the secure area with classified information. And the independent counsel said he wasn’t supposed to do that. He was supposed to send it to him. And so they charged him in in D.C., if you’re a Republican, you’re guilty the minute you walk into that city. Was that disgrace. Caspar Weinberger was a tremendous hero, built up our military, helped defeat the Soviet Union. Just tremendous. Now we challenged the constitutionality of the independent counsel statute. We challenge the constitutionality. Of his report. The use of six grand jury excuse me, 11 grand jury information. And we lost. And his report came out. Our reports were attached. I sat down with former Attorney General Meese. And I said to him again, I was out of the government. So was he. And I said to him. Landmark. We had prepared a brief to go all the way to the Supreme Court. At the time we contacted Chief Justice Ring. I’ve never explained this. Have I missed a producer? We contacted Chief Justice William Rehnquist office. We told them that within the next three or 4 hours, we were going to file a brief that was loaded with this grand jury information, taking on the prosecutor and everything else. They needed to be done in secret, believe it or not, at least to that point. We were actually given information on how to go to the court through the back door. We would be met by a court martial. How they would accept it? And I sat down with Attorney General Meese and Brad Reynolds, who was fantastic assistant attorney general for the Civil rights Division, had been. We sat together and I said, okay, Mr. Mays. He said, Call me Ed. So I started to comment. All right, Ed, what do you want to do? I want to show you what a remarkable man Ed Meese is. He said, I don’t want us to fail it. I said, Well, it’s ready to go. He said, That’s okay. He said, What’s Ted Olson going to do on behalf of Reagan? And I had spoken to Ted and. He told me that the president, President Reagan, had decided to let the report out. He had nothing to hide, even though it was outrageous. And Ed Meese said to me, Well, Mark, we can’t then file. I said, What? What your thinking on that? He said, If President Reagan wants it out and I’m in there filing that, we don’t want it out because of the violations of basic. Basic violations of law by this prosecutor. It’ll look like I’m trying to cover up what took place on behalf of the president, even though the president himself made it public, he said, we can’t do that. He said, what we’re going to do is let it go public. Tell the court you’re not filing. I said, Well, I still call Mr. Meat. I said, Well, Mr. Meese. We’re going to get creamed in the media here. I said, Don Regan doesn’t know how to respond to this. Weinberger doesn’t. George Shultz doesn’t. President Reagan, who was beginning his decline, he doesn’t. He said, then I’ll do it three weeks. Any show that wants to talk to me good, bad or indifferent? Local, regional, state, national. I will do it. For three weeks. And then we’ll stop. So he took it on his shoulders and that’s what he did. That’s what he did. I’ve now told you things I don’t believe I’ve ever told anybody else. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just. The nature of the beast. It was the early 1990s. How long ago was that? That 35 years ago. Something like that. Anyway. Ted Olson was a gentleman. He was a very kind man. Several years ago. I don’t remember. In Reston Town Center outside of Washington, D.C.. I was having a steak dinner, I think, with my daughter. My wife would remind me of she was there. I think she was there. And Ted was sitting in another booth with his son. I hadn’t seen him. It was dark in there and he called over and we spent a lot of time together. He was fantastic, as always. Again, he was involved in some cases you might not agree with, some cases I didn’t agree with, but they weren’t based on politics. They were based on his principled beliefs. And he passed away, unfortunately. You know, it’s true what they say. It really is. It’s true what they say. Remember as a kid, listening to the radio, listening to ABC as a kid from Philadelphia. Has a big reach. And I was listening to a broadcaster by the name of Jean Shepherd, the most of these great broadcasters, Jean Shepherd, cousin Bruce, the others. They move back and forth between ABC in Iowa. They just did. It’s the way it worked. Some of that will take place again, I’m sure. And my favorite, Bob Grant. He and I were very, very close. Became best friends, actually. But I remember Jean Shepherd, who was very cerebral and very entertaining. I remember him saying, and I’ve told you this, folks. 500 years from now, nobody will know who you are. The vast majority of us, there’s obviously a handful of. People who are remembered. Some trust. Tremendous people, some as evil as hell. But for the vast majority of us, we don’t remember family members 500 years ago. And that was his point. I remember him saying that. I remember watching my favorite movie of all time, Patton, and I watched it probably 50 times over the course of my life. And that speech that George C. Scott gives the beginning. And that phrase glory is fleeting. Glory is fleeting. Between what Jean Shepherd said when I was a kid and I remembered it. And my first time I watched Peyton and I remember that many, many years ago. Glory is fleeting. This is why when you have people on TV or radio or Hollywood, even in politics. Her egomaniacal. They think they’re better than everybody else who look down on everybody. When you meet them in person, not particularly polite. Nobody’s going to remember that. Nobody’s going to remember me. And that’s why you need to have some level of humility. That’s why you need to have, as I do, a special relationship with your audience, with you. In the moment. You may be a big shot. Maybe. But in the end, you’re not. You’re just not. Ted Olson passed away today. In the vast majority. The American people won’t know that he passed away, won’t know who he was, what a critical role he played. For Ronald Reagan. For the election. The bush. In so many other cases at the Department of Justice that mattered in the everyday lives of Americans. And so I take this time. May he rest in peace. There’s at least one person who’s in that family who will remember him, and that’s me. We’ve got a lot to cover. I’ll be right back.

Segment 2
The Democrats, starting with the biggest lowlife Chuck Schumer. Another lowlife. This slip and fall lawyer, Mark Elias are trying to steal the Senate race in Pennsylvania. Not a single media outlet. Any of these lefties will talk about accepting the results of an election. So now they’re going have a recount. Pennsylvania. This is what allies does. This is how they stole the seat from Norm Coleman. And gave it to. What is that guy’s name? Al Franken. And this is what they do. Now I’m watching the president. These announcements and these appointments of various individuals to various positions in the government. What’s interesting is a large number of these people I know quite well and they’re fantastic, some I don’t know as well. I might even like one or two of them, but it doesn’t matter. President Trump needs to succeed. He succeeds. The country succeeds. If they succeed in sabotaging him. Then what? Then what’s left? So I’m not going to play the media game. What do you think of this one, that one or the other one? I think they’re all there to do what the president wants them to do, needs them to do. And when they step out and they do something else, he’ll deal with it. But this is an administration that you and I elected in its administration that needs to succeed, period. Period. When we have a disagreement, a policy, I may mention it, I may not. We’ll see. But I know I know what these Democrats are going to do. I know what their media are going to do. I know. They’re going to try and reverse the course of the election. By trying to handicap kneecap this president. There are certain core issues, core principle issues that we cannot compromise on. And I don’t think the president will. I certainly won’t. But that’s not my point. My point is, we got to give this man an opportunity and support him to get done what needs to be done, what needs to get done. That’s my mindset. That’s where I’m coming from. He don’t like it. Listen to some left wing radio show. I’ll be right back.

Segment 3
Tell you some of the appointments. I like the best experts at defense. So he comes under attack because, you know, he’s not an old bureaucrat general who’s failed at something. He’s not a leftist. The sort that Obama might select hadn’t been hanging around Washington, D.C.. Like so many of these people they select, they had the Pentagon and so forth. HEGSETH Smarter. Then I don’t know how many secretaries of defense. The man is a combat veteran. In Iraq and Afghanistan. He wrote a book. We had him on the program, I believe, and went to, number one, a brilliant book. On the Pentagon, the military, the wokeism, or what needs to be fixed. He’s a young man. It’s a good thing. Does everybody have to be? 87 years old in Washington, D.C.? He’s a young man, and I think he’ll attract more recruits, especially when they ring out all that woke die crap out of the Pentagon. And he’s going to have a hell of a job on his hand. It’s a massive bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. I’m not talking about the foot soldiers. I’m talking about the bureaucracy. And he’s going to need all of our support and all the help he can get. And he’s got it from me. There’s no question about it. And please don’t harass and whether the never wars don’t get into wars. Like we’re the warmongers. It drives me nuts. These people on TV and radio take Seth. I’ll use his head. He’s smart. He knows how to avoid wars, but on the other hand, he knows at times. Times you got to do what you got to do. Tom home and a genius choice as the border czar. President is not afraid to have a border czar. He wants that border secure. He wants to begin deportation of criminals. And others. And then more massive deportation as Eisenhower did. And of course, the Democrats in the media are opposed to it because they created the debacle that we have on the border and in this country, a 21 at least a million illegal immigrants. Now they’re worried about money, the spending of money. Can you imagine Democrats worried about that? And money. It’ll cost us how much? I don’t know. How much does chain migration cost us? How much? What does chain migration cost us when all these illegal aliens have children are? They become U.S. citizens and then they each bring in 20 different people. What will that cost us and what is it costing our schools now in law enforcement now? Our communities now. Look at New York. Look at Chicago. Look all over the country. It’s enormous. I don’t want to hear about that. And of course, they never talk about the sex slavery or the missing 325,000 unaccompanied minors. They never talk about any of it because they don’t give a damn. John Ratcliffe, brilliant choice, CIA director. He’s got the background, he’s got the smarts, he’s got the courage. Elise Stefanik, ambassador to the United Nations. She’s going to be absolutely outstanding. No question about it. Michael Waltz. You’ve seen him on Fox. Sky is. Just perfect. Perfect for national security adviser. My family and I have gotten to know him as we have. Pete Hegseth, my wife’s known him for years, even before he was popular and well known. He’s just terrific. We’ve gotten to know Elise Stefanik. She’s fantastic. Who else? Huckabee. It’s going to be a great ambassador to the state of Israel. A great ambassador to the state of Israel. He’s a very decent man, too, by the way. Very, very kind man. And he was an outstanding governor. Lee Zeldin, over at EPA, That’s a rat’s nest over at EPA. Don’t let anybody fool you. It’s ground zero for the degrowth movement, the climate change movement, all the nutjobs and all the regulations intended to destroy your lifestyle and destroy our economy. He’s going to have his hands full. Lee Zeldin is a real class act. Class act. My family and I know him quite well too. Musk and Ramaswamy. Office of Government Efficiency. Can you think of a better tag team than that to handle that? I can’t. Who even would have thought of a department like that or an office like that under the Democrats? Nobody. And there are others, too. But these are people I know and admire, either very close friends or acquaintances. In the case of Musk, I don’t know him at all. Ramaswamy We don’t know each other that well. But he’s a good man. These people will do the right thing. So the nos that have been named so far. That I can think of off the top of my head. These are the stellar the stellar appointees, and the president deserves our full support. For all his appointees right now. He does. Because he’s trying to do the right thing. He’s trying to do the right thing and he’s going to come to a head when they’re not going to just sit back. First, I’ll try and start picking off a couple of these guys and gals. They’re going to try and undermine the house, which is a very, very tight majority. By the way, that’s not Mike Johnson’s fault. We talked about this. The census got it wrong. There should be nine more Republicans in the House. Nine more just by the census screwing up. Just by the census growing up. But I think this is. We have to be very optimistic, certainly going into this. We’re going to have fantastic Thanksgiving, aren’t you, Mr. Producer? The Democrats, their face is going to, you know, drop into their stuffing and into the mashed potatoes. Oh, my God. Okay, great. But it will be a very good Thanksgiving. Suppose we lost. It would have been a horrendous Thanksgiving. We have some great staff appointments, too, around the president of the United States. Smart people, loyal people. Her going to be absolutely outstanding. Who are outstanding? And let’s see here. We see there’s a list of them. Just bear with me. I know a few of them, and I know them to be great. Dan Scavino. This guy is just fantastic. A real sweetheart, too, so loyal to the president, have been a big fan of this radio show even before he went into the White House the first time. But he’s been with President Trump forever. Steven Miller. Is there a better person than Stephen Miller? Of course they’re going to make him out to be something he’s not. They do that to all of us. So ignore these. These rat thinks. American First Legal. My wife has been working over there. What a fantastic group. A fantastic team. But even more than that, he’s a great guy. Worked on Capitol Hill, used to keep in touch with this program. Denny. Mr. Producer. He’s a long time patriot. So he and Dan, I don’t really know the others, but I know them and they are great. And there’s going to be more. There’s going to be more. President met with Joe Biden today for 2 hours. I don’t know how he did it. Meaning President Trump, by all accounts, from the president himself. It went pretty well. By all accounts, it went pretty well. I’m sure it did. Um. I have to laugh. I mean, what Biden say for 2 hours, you know, you know, President Trump probably had to do most of the talking, right? I got to believe that. And of course, when it came to the public. Shaking in their hands and chit chatting and so forth. But the fact of the matter is they scooted you know, they scooted the press out there as fast as they could because that’s what they do. That’s what they have to do. We’ve got a ton more news and much more news here. And we’re going to have two great shows this week. And I can tell you already. Saturday night, by the way. Saturday night last night. We won the whole day on all cable news. We had massive ratings, well over 2 million. I mean, this is what network TV gets. This is where Meet the Press does not get the Sunday shows, don’t get Saturday eat despite college football and everything else on the number one show. Sunday we’re in the teeth of Here’s what’s happens on Sunday. Sunday night football begins. Ends. The kickoff begins at 8:20 p.m. when my show begins at 8 p.m.. And so we’re right in the middle of that. And Sunday Night Football, according to the people I’ve talked to at Fox, is hotter now than it’s ever been in a decade or two. And yet we still get huge ratings because of you. I want them to be bigger, but they’re still huge because of you. So we’re right in the teeth of Sunday night football. It’s just like this program on radio 6 to 9 p.m. Eastern. We’re right in the teeth of all sports. All of it. Dinner time Little League activities, you know, 6 to 9 p.m.. Right. That’s family time Easter. And yet here you are. We crush the competition in every single city and that would include New York. The other timeslots. They don’t go up against sports as regularly as we do. We looked at this. I’m on 20 nights a week, right? And what was it that they determined, Mr. Producer? During the height of sports like the Mets and the Yankees and so forth and so on. When we’re up against baseball, just as an example, we’ve we’ve done an analysis of this. 17 nights at a 20 nights we’re up against baseball. Did you know that, Mr. Producer? Right. It’s amazing. And again, in addition to everything else that might be on TV are happening at your dinner table. And so read this again. This is Eastern Time. And there we are crushing our competition across the street. Now. There was a time when I was asked many years ago if I wanted to do noon to three. And this was ABC Radio Networks. I said, I’m not going to do noon to three. I’d be going up against my buddy, Rush Limbaugh. Now, how many hosts do that? Mr. Putin’s who are so loyal that they won’t do something like that? Me That’s it. And boy, they offered me a boatload of money. I said, Absolutely not. Then a few years later, they said to me, Mark. How would you like to go up? 3 to 6 p.m.. Against my dear friend Sean HANNITY. Now, these are people who helped me get into radio, but they don’t care. Not them. The the companies at the time. And they offered me a freighter full of money. I said no. I would never do that to Sean. So here I am, 69, and they’ve tried everything 6 to 9 ABC before I was they tried everyone and everything. Every age group. They tried, you know, double hosts. I can’t even think of every they tried names of agave. You’d be familiar with them, especially in New York. They weren’t cutting it. And then I come in and I do what I do because it’s a very, very tough timeslot. It just is what it is. And it’s thanks to you folks in the audience. Sometimes radio companies don’t get it. They don’t get the relationship between a host and their audience. They can just drop somebody else. It doesn’t work that way. It’ll never work that way. When we come back, I want you to hear a little bit about what the president told The New York Post about his discussion with. Biden. Don’t you love Melania Trump that you love her? You know, she won’t sit down for tea with Jill Biden. Excuse me, Dr. Jill. More like Dr. Jekyll, but it doesn’t really matter. She says, Wait a minute. You said a SWAT team into my home. You went through my belongings. I’m not sitting down and having tea with Joe Biden. I’ve got other things to do. That’s the way my wife would react. That’s the way I would react, too. It’s amazing how magnanimous President Trump was today. Truly, he was magnanimous. Melania had a damn good point. I kind of agree with her. I’ll be right back.

Segment 4
You know, I’ve decided we’re going to dig into this Pennsylvania thing going on. The lawyers for the Democrats mark allies and sleaze balls like him are trying to steal that election. So I’m going to talk to one of the lawyers representing the good guys and. And I will get into that. Because we need to find out what the hell is going on here. Did you send a rich? Okay. There it is. I want to turn my friend spirit on. I can read all your emails when the show is going on. I’m sorry, buddy. I appreciate them. I can’t read them till later. So we’re going to dig into what’s going on in Pennsylvania, the effort by the Democrats to steal the election there. Notice the median American. Are you going to accept the election results? Are going to accept them, huh? Are you? Well. I just got word that the lawyer handling the case for the integrity of the case can’t come on the show right now. Not sure what that means. Actually, of course, he can talk about it. But let me give you some of the inside information that’s going on in Pennsylvania. Recount as required by statute, if the margin between the two candidates is 0.5%. So the secretary of state ordered the recount. Casey could have waived it because he’s not going to win, but he didn’t. There’s a significant number of Republican attorneys there duking it out. Real firepower taking on Eliason Casey. This Marc Elias, remember the slip and fall loser is making absurd arguments to get ballots counted that should not be counted. And this is what he’s done. This is what he’s done before. This is what he’s done before. And so the filings are going on, the battles taking place. Schumer’s in on it. He’s behind it, too, trying to knock out McCormick. This guy, Bob Casey, he got elected initially because of his father’s name and his father’s popularity many, many decades ago. He’s basically a mannequin. He sits there in the United States Senate. He’s been there 18 years. He wants six more, does exactly what Schumer tells him to do. That’s why Schumer’s fighting like hell for him. Exactly what Schumer wants him to do. So they’re not accepting the election results there. Now, we could have won in Arizona with Carrie Lake, but Mitch McConnell withheld providing her with any support whatsoever. McConnell. Siding with the Democrats. Defeated Lake. We could have won in Nevada with Sam Brown. But McConnell didn’t provide enough help to Sam Brown, despite the fact that there was a very close race and Donald Trump won that state. That’s two. Harvey in Wisconsin. Very, very close. My view, do what they’re doing in Pennsylvania, if you can, under the law in Wisconsin, get a recount and do everything you can to take that seat. It’s brass knuckle time, ladies and gentlemen. It’s the UFC without the gloves. That’s what it is. I’ll be right back.