November 14th, 2022

On Monday’s Mark Levin Show, President Biden is beating Presidents Reagan and Trump in nominating judges and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is helping him do it. McConnell has no agenda but to amass his own power and political survival in Washington, DC. Then, Congressman Jim Jordan calls in to discuss how House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is best positioned to be the next Speaker of the House under a Republican Majority. Jordan made it clear that they are looking to block the addition of 87,000 new IRS agents and to conduct the oversight investigations that the American people deserve. Later, former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani joins the show to announce his total vindication in Georgia from the trumped-up charges he was charged with by the Manhattan Prosecutor’s Office. Giuliani says they only came after him because he dared to represent President Donald Trump. Afterward, the newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu tells Mark about his most recent win as Prime Minister and the alliances he had to forge to get to it. Netanyahu also discusses the life experiences that inspired his latest memoir, Bibi: My Story.

Photo by Drew Angerer

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

Rough transcript of Hour 1

Hour 1 Segment 1

I’m sorry I wasn’t here Friday. Utterly unexpected. Turns out I’ve covered again. You can probably hear it over the microphone. And I got quite sick Friday afternoon, so I had to bow out. Who sat in for me? Mister Producer Brian Mudd, who’s wonderful. He came in at the last minute. I want to thank Brian and I’ve been doing this out all weekend, but we have a system set up here. It’s really a portable system where I can do this show from pretty much anywhere. So that’s what I’m doing right now. You can sound a I guess I sound a little bit like Phyllis Diller, but that’s not my intention. Of course, I’ll be fine. I’m just basically not going anywhere, hanging out in two rooms, and that’s the way that goes. So that said, I have been posting things. I write these things up, send random. Mr. Producer, Mr. Call screener. These guys have been posting away all weekend. Here’s the thing there are several narratives out there that I just don’t accept, including from a number of friends of mine. Colleagues of mine. We’re not angry with each other. We’re not fighting with each other. Brett HUME and Marc Thiessen over at Twitter. They’re looking at the numbers. They’re big. Let’s just be honest. McConnell proponents and I saw this in the Tea Party 2010. I saw it when Ted Cruz was taking on McConnell on how they all attack Ted Cruz. My problems with McConnell, which I’ll get to in a minute, go much deeper even than even this last election. He is a very poor leader now. They can point the judges all they want. Joe Biden is kicking ass on judges right now, just slaughtering us. We’re not filibustering. They’re judges. He’s actually beating now the rate of judicial appointments that Trump had and Reagan had. And so that is bad news. I also don’t like the way Mitch McConnell uses his campaign funds. He has to help other candidates, but also to go after candidates. You don’t know that. Baldock in New Hampshire, that people in New Hampshire know are faced four and a half million dollars worth of ads in the Republican primary smearing him. And that money was coming from the Senate Leadership Fund, which was McConnell. He raises this money from very wealthy Republican donors and then does with it as he wishes. And the guy he uses at that fund is a name, a guy by the name of Steve Law. Steven Law, who used to work, I believe, at the Chamber of Commerce. But McConnell didn’t have an agenda. As I will demonstrate, we mentioned that almost a year ago, he doesn’t have an agenda. There’s no legislative agenda. It’s hard to win big elections our way. He trashed the Tea Party in 2010 and blame them for bad candidates and a lack of victories. He’s busy, as is his media and surrogates, trashing Trump. That’s why we lost this election and so forth. And it’s not that simple. It’s not that simple. And same with the house. Jim Jordan will be on here in less than an hour. I look at the house, I pull back, I look at the house, put personalities aside. I would put the McConnell personalities or what’s the problem? He’s the he’s the problem. He doesn’t want any younger senators or senators with more relevant ideas or more conservative cutting edge ideas to have any power. And he’s been there 15 years. And what have we accomplished, really? Losing the country. I look at a guy like. Kevin McCarthy I don’t view McCarthy as I view McConnell are two different people. McConnell’s been in the minority. Hasn’t been leading the Republicans. Paul Ryan led the Republicans. So he’s really not had an opportunity to exercise his power. And you’ll say, what about this election? Man raised almost half a billion dollars. I know McConnell raised about 200 billion, but he raised almost half a billion dollars. He wasn’t going after candidates in the general election, picking and choosing and cherry picking. They were throwing money everywhere they could to try and get people elected. And I want to talk more about some of these people who are challenging him. I am not a special pleader for Kevin McCarthy. I just am curious to see how they’re going to get a majority. In support of any Republican. If not him who? If not him who? I even wrote, you know, I get contacted constantly. I was today from a number of my friends at the what do they call the group cohorts, the freedom group in there, including Freedom Caucus, several of them. And I said, Who do you have? They don’t have anybody. I said, I thought, Biggs, I’m sorry to say this. A lot of them said, Most people don’t like Biggs. I said, Well, I’ve had to deal with Biggs myself in Arizona, which I’ll get to in a minute. And he was no conservative. So my view is McCarthy needs to embrace the Conservatives as he has several like Jim Jordan. He would be chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Marjorie Taylor GREENE Is it? He’s got more tolerance for her than I do. Who’s campaigning for him effectively? Donald Trump making calls on his behalf. I’m not making calls to anybody. I’m just speaking out loud to you. I see a distinct difference between McConnell, who is affirmatively anti movement conservative, and Kevin McCarthy, who’s right of center, who has to figure out how to build a working majority. One uses an iron fist and is very, in my view. Kind of sleazy in the way he operates. That’s McConnell and Kevin McCarthy kind of. Where is it all? Honestly. But but I’ll make the distinctions better in a moment. I want to read something to you then. I think some of this will make a little more sense. First of all, Ron Johnson and Hawley and Rubio and Graham and Cruz and Lee and Scott and Loomis. That’s eight United States senators so far, by my count, of Mitch McConnell to put off this vote for leader because Herschel Walker is running and we don’t have a senator chosen yet from Alaska. Because in Alaska, which we’ll get to in a minute and we’ve talked about before. The fact of the matter is that Mitch McConnell tried to fight one Republican, a conservative that was backed by the Republican Party of Alaska in order to elect his friend Lisa murkowski. This is outrageous. And the fact that he spent money in the Republican primary, New Hampshire and did brave damage to General Bolduc, a hero, a patriot. It’s outrageous the fact that he didn’t lift a finger and give $0.01 to Blake Masters. Now, the answer for the the McConnell crowd is always the same thing. Well, how much did Trump spent? Trump is next president. This guy is the leader of the Republican Party, whether you like it or not, effectively in the United States Senate. He’s the one with a quarter of $1,000,000,000. Okay, ex-presidents, where the hell was George W Bush? He wasn’t anywhere. Why didn’t he help? Dick Cheney can’t even show his face anywhere right now. Where was Chris Christie, who’s all over the place now commenting on Larry Hogan? Another fraud. Where were these guy? Nowhere. Nowhere. The problem is the current leadership in the Senate and McConnell decided to run on nothing. Rick Scott’s right. I pointed this out before. As a matter of fact, Mr. Producer. We have a couple of clips on that. I think we do. You still with me, Mr. Producer? Let’s listen. Let me see here, folks. I get we’ve got so many clips here. Let’s see. Go ahead, Katie. Go. Mitch McConnell is, if not the longest one of the longest serving Republican leaders in the Senate, which is a remarkable thing because he’s not bright, he’s not articulate, and he’s unprincipled. Well, maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be, huh? Sure looks that way. And he’s so compelling. All the other republics vote for him to be their leader. Now, what it is, he’s like a mob boss. He threatens them to withhold money from them. He’s figured out how to do it, and he’s been doing it a long, long time. And he doesn’t lay out an agenda for the Republicans in the Senate. I dare anybody to tell us what the Mitch McConnell, the putative leader of the republics in the Senate, what his agenda is. You won’t know because he hasn’t told anybody. That’s February 23, 2022, way by the eclipse. I’m not going to bore you with all of them, which I said a few months back when he was specifically asked by a reporter, what is the agenda, the legislative agenda? We’re running on bipartisanship. Remember how I mocked him? He had no substantive agenda. None. Zero. Now you hear the backbench is all mentioning that. Now, we’ve been mentioning that for month after month after month after month. What are they running on? Well, inflation. What are you going to do? What are you running on? Nothing. He’s not running on anything. National Review has one of the dumbest editorials in the history of National Review. It’s an embarrassment. Defending Mitch McConnell. There’s nothing to defend. And when you read my friends Marc Thiessen and Brit HUME, they’re not really my friends are my acquaintances. When you read what they write, it’s fine. It’s all expected. It’s something you’ve heard a thousand times already. The great Mitch McConnell, there he is saving us from Trump. They are saving us from the Tea Party. Wasn’t long ago he was saving us from Reagan. What do you mean, Mark? I want to read something to you from somebody who wrote a book about McConnell. But I understand the people have biases and so forth. But there’s some very interesting history here. Who is McConnell? He doesn’t speak well. He’s not articulate. He’s not charismatic. He won’t go on most conservative media. He’s the most despised Republican politician. Of all Republican politicians. How does he manage to be the head of the Republicans in the Senate when his own base doesn’t stand him? That’s why he can’t go out like Schumer and campaign for these candidates. Who did he campaign for? Nobody. They talk about Trump. Don’t show up in Georgia. McConnell can’t show up in Georgia. McConnell couldn’t show up in Nevada. McConnell couldn’t show up in Pennsylvania. He couldn’t show up in New York. Can’t show up anywhere. More when I return.

Hour 1 Segment 2

We’re going to address the House more specifically after I finish here with the Senate. But very interesting, don’t you think, that Rand Paul hasn’t said anything about Mitch McConnell? Our friend Tom Cotton, very disappointing. He he’s endorsed Mitch McConnell. This is this piece from I only have a few minutes, but I’m going to carry it over. So stick with me. And PR Senator Mitch McConnell’s political life examined in The Cynic November 2014. So this is eight years old and I can’t read the whole thing, but you need to know. In 1976, Mitch McConnell supported Gerald Ford against Ronald Reagan. In 1980, Mitch McConnell said that Ronald Reagan was his third or fourth choice after Bush his third or fourth choice. So he’s never been in sync with conservative movements, are with the public, for that matter, but more importantly, with the base of the Republican Party. In 1984, McConnell ran for the Senate and he won with fewer than 5000 votes. There was no question what happened. McConnell had won basically on the coattails of Ronald Reagan, and McConnell looked at that very, very close result and basically thought to himself, You know what? I don’t want it to ever be that close again. I see where the Republican Party is heading. I see where my state is heading. I see where the south is heading politically and I need to get on the train. He was a very liberal Republican before he flipped McConnell, who’d been the Senate minority leader since 2007. He would continue to be the leader, minority or majority for the next 15 years. This is what he’s dreamed about since he was a very, very young man, and now he’s about to achieve that dream, writes the author McGillis. There was a big battle back in the Republican Party in the sixties between the conservative wing and still quite strong moderate wing. This, of course, during the time of Barry Goldwater 64 nomination to the party coming from the conservative wing. But there was still a very, very strong moderate contingent of the party. And Mitch McConnell was completely on the side of that line. He was firmly pro-union in his first election back in 1977 in Louisville, he got the endorsement of the AFL CIO because he backed collective bargaining for public employees, which is something even a lot of Democrats today don’t support. The wall on is more than to make sure they get it in the right order here. Skipping around McConnell to me, she says, embodies two things in politics today. One is the transformation of the Republican Party from a party that used to be have quite a few moderate and liberal members are northern liberal Republicans, Midwestern moderate Republicans in a party that is much more monolithically conservative and really southern base, she says. McConnell really in bottles embodies that shift because he himself has evolved what that transformation just is to a T, she says. But at the same time, he embodies for me the mindset that has become more and more dominant in Washington today, which is the permanent campaign mindset. It’s the mindset that all that really matters is the next election, the next cycle. It’s not so much what you do when you’re in power. It’s what you do to position yourself for the next time around your next reelection. That’s key. More when I return.

Hour 1 Segment 3

I was supposed to be at the Republican Governors Association meeting Tuesday. I was invited to interview Governor Ron DeSantis, and I had to cancel that. And then later on came an invitation to be at Mar a Lago for Donald Trump’s announcement. Mr. President, certainly couldn’t have been in two places at once, but I had made the commitment, of course, to DeSantis. So keep but I, I couldn’t do it anyway because here I am. You know, when you listened and I want to get back to this Mitch McConnell piece, because it tells you everything you need to know. You know, it’s amazing to me the way I speak on the air and I call these people the Marxists that they are on the left. And I expose them for exactly what they’re doing and what they are. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a few more candidates that did exactly the same thing? Joe Biden gets up, he’s calling people semi fascist, telling you democracy is in danger. He’s not kidding. Obama They all run with their lies. I speak the truth, but our guys are afraid. Even some of my colleagues, to use the word Marxists, we are fighting Marxists, not socialists, not progressives, not leftists, not liberals. I mean, they call us all kinds of names. Can’t we call them what they are? As long as we remain fearful of our principles and fearful of exposing them for what they are. We’re not going to have great election cycles. Even though we’re teed up to have a great one in 2024, particularly in the Senate, as I’ve talked about here before. It’s not going to happen. You need truth. You need an agenda. You need principles. You need substance. Even so-called conservative outlets, they’ve lost all of this. You’re not going to see it at National Review. You’re not going to see it at The Wall Street Journal. They’re going to jump right in the line about raising the debt ceiling, spending more and more. Do you know that we’re now paying almost $1,000,000,000,000 in interest on our debt? In about 15 years, we went from 6 trillion to 31 trillion. We had 19 Republicans that voted for that phony infrastructure bill led by McConnell. I mean, I could go on and on and on here. Let’s go on. This book I mentioned to you, this is an NPR piece, but it’s by. But it was written eight years ago. I want to reiterate something. She says McConnell really embodies that shift because he himself has evolved with that transformation just to a tee. But at the same time, he embodies for me the mindset that has become more and more dominant in Washington, she writes, which is the permanent campaign mindset. You see, it’s not like DeSantis or Reagan or the winners out there who say, I have principles, I want to advance the cause. And this is why he said. That he wasn’t going to run on any issues. The Republicans weren’t going to run on any issues, not on a legislative agenda. Because he stands for nothing. People say, well, what about that First Amendment when he wrote, you know, I fought McCain-Feingold. Why did he fight McCain-Feingold? Because he’s principled on the Bill of Rights? No, because of what this article’s saying. The permanent campaign mindset. That’s what he cares about. Do you know what Obamacare passed? He put in a rider in there that would increase ten times the ability of his Senate leadership fund and funds like it to raise money. That’s how he came up with hundreds of millions of dollars to counter the Republican funding system with his own, if you will, political action committee. It’s the mindset that all really matters, she writes, is the next election, the next cycle. This is what she’s saying McConnell believes in. It’s not so much what you do when you’re in power in Washington. It’s what you do to position yourself for the next time around your next re-election, your party’s next election cycle. That mindset has become very prevalent. It’s bipartisan. It also suffuses the media. But McConnell embodies it more than anybody else. He got that? He stands for nothing. And yet there he is constantly. Let’s continue. What about his leadership posts in the Senate? It’s something he campaigned for more aggressively than just about anyone before him, she writes. His colleagues in the Senate were struck to see just how determined and eager he was to climb the ladder. And what he would do is he would start quite early, several years before the elections for these various leadership posts. He would start strategizing and how to win those elections. He had a wingman, his colleague, former Senator Bob Bennett from Utah. Now, that’s interesting. This may explain why he doesn’t like Mike Lee. That’s that’s I believe they recall that’s who Mike Lee defeated in his first round during the Tea Party in 2010. And this is why he hates the Tea Party. Bob Bennett from Utah would go out a year or two in advance, listen and start trying to count votes and fill people out on whether they would support Mitch or someone else. So in other words, any would be candidates in any primaries. Mitch wanted to know first and foremost if they would support him for the Republican leader. Sound familiar? Well, you’re not going to read this in National Review and you’re not going to see this on my favorite cable show on Fox. I’m explaining it to you. Again, McConnell was not the most naturally popular, beloved person within his caucus, so he really needed help from someone else to kind of go out and line up those votes for him. They were bad mouth the opposition and various rivals for various jobs. And you can see McConnell do this now when you read the editorial pages at The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal and National Review and some of the other outlets, these are the recipients of what McConnell does. Washington Examiner Now, I think they were bad mouth the opposition and various rivals for various jobs really in a junior high school kind of way trying to line up support so that when the time came for the elections, for the various leadership posts higher up on the ladder, it suddenly would become clear if McConnell had, in fact, lined up just enough support to get the job. And he feels that way about his lieutenants to Thune, Barrasso, Cornyn. And this is how he works. And he does it 24 seven like a leftist because he was of the left, once left of center, certainly. Does this now make more sense, Mr. Producer? It’s really spot on that because I said it, but because it is. Now there are many senators, eight of them right now who are asking for a delay in the vote. And Barrasso is out there, one of his lieutenants saying, no way. Our friend Tom Cotton says, no way, no way. I’m just warning these guys. I’m warning them. You’re not going to be able to treat us like we’re schizophrenic. It’s not going to happen. You’re not going to be able to do that. We’re not elected officials. We don’t have a say in who the leader is in the Senate. We have a say who are nominees are for office in the States, but we don’t have a say because it’s all opaque and it’s all country club. Now let me make something abundantly clear. When you hear commentators on TV. When you watch them. When you hear this endless trashing of these nominees, including Trump nominees, especially Trump nominees, that is people who supported the nominees Trump supported. And by the way, in some cases, Trump would come in later and support them after the people spoke. They’re trashing you. These are primaries. You’re voting. You’re voting. You’re not voting for McConnell. You don’t have any say. They’re going to have a vote this week, whether we like it or not. They’re going to install McConnell for the 400th time. He’ll be there now. He’s already the longest serving Republican leader in history. More than Dirksen, more than Bob Dole, more than Trent Lott, more than anybody. And why he doesn’t carry our agenda doesn’t even have an agenda. That’s by design. Now. I’m not one of those who talked about Red Wave. I’ve said this over and over again. I’ve said it over months. I said it on Fox. I said it here, said it on live TV. I didn’t see a red wave. To be perfectly honest with you. Because of the way the Senate set up. That said, we could have picked off two or three. Perhaps that wouldn’t have been away, but that would have been nice. So when they keep saying, look at that nominee, Masters in Arizona, master was the duly selected nominee. The Republican Party by the voters. So they’re attacking you. You didn’t perform like Mitch McConnell and the Republicans want it. It’s not his fault. He didn’t put a penny in there. It’s not his fault he didn’t pull together the candidates on an agenda. It’s not his fault that he had no legislative policies in mind. No, that’s your fault. Or that he spent four and a half million dollars of the Republican primary in New Hampshire to try and take out ball back. He failed, but he damaged the man. A retired general because the general wasn’t certain whether he’d support McConnell. I just read you what the woman wrote in the book. That’s all he cares about. That’s what he plots for. Day in and day out. That’s it. That he’d be the leader, whether they’re in the minority or majority. It doesn’t matter. And it’s about time some more of these so-called conservative Republicans in the Senate stand. The hell are. And that’s the truth. And it’s enough to hear even conservative media trash our voters. You don’t have to support Trump or MAGA or whatever. Stop trashing the voters. The Democrats don’t do this. And the Democrats make up names. They’re fascists. Oh, they’re this. The other side’s filled with Marx. Don’t say Marxist when you are not like Levin. No, it’s what they are. Now. When we come back, I want to address the House side. I’ll be right back.

Hour 1 Segment 4

By the way, shout out to my buddy Steven Smith. I love this guy. You heard me talking on the program. He sends me a beautiful email. My damn email is not working, so I’ll say it on the air. And he had called a few weeks back. And I hope you’re doing well, too, buddy. Thank you very, very much. You may not think this, but you’d be wrong. He’s a wonderful, kind guy. He reminds me of me. You want to know the truth? I’m sort of a white him. He’s sort of a black me. Can I say that, Mr. Producer? There. I said it. Live with it. All right, let’s look at the house first. I started looking on the Internet. Andy Biggs is going to launch a leadership challenge against Kevin McCarthy. Who’s Andy Biggs? You may recall Andy Biggs, we talked about him here a few years back. I’m no fan of this guy. He’s part of the Freedom Caucus. He’s been a conservative on TV. I’m sure he is. But that said, the only way we’re going to save this country, ultimately, ladies and gentlemen, I believe, is convention of states. There’s five and a half million members. It is an extremely active and vigorous organization. You know, I’ve supported this for years. It is crucial. We have 19 states now that have passed resolutions 19. We need 15 more. But we couldn’t get it passed in Arizona. We had a conservative House, a conservative Senate controlled by the Republicans. But the president of the Senate was a guy by the name of Andy Biggs before he came, a congressman. And there were enough votes to pass it in the Senate in Arizona. But he refused to bring it up. He one man blocked it and he wrote something called The Con of the Con Con. So not only was he not just opposed to it, he was affirmatively mocking it, attacking it. It’s in the Constitution. Now this guy says he wants to be speaker of the House. We were we have some lunatics who comment here and there, including on rights group, including on my side. So it’s much harder to do it. Anything. Mark must be a rhino. These are fools that don’t do anything but sit in their basement and wet themselves. And then ask from Mommy to bring them a cup of tea. That’s not exactly true. But regardless, what happens is Article five prescribes a uniform method of call when two thirds of the state legislatures 34 adopt applications. It’s an application to Congress demanding that Congress call a convention on a particular subject. Congress is supposed to do it. That is, it must call. Right. But if you have somebody who is so ideologically opposed, they could do exactly what Andy Biggs did as speaker of the House. Blocking. BLOCK it. Congress is supposed to set forth the place, time and state designated subject matter. In other words, it’s a ministerial task. But so is voting on it in Arizona. But he blocked it anyway. I don’t trust this guy within 40 states of the convention of the states. He’s demonstrated to me he’s no constitutional conservative. And we have millions of people working on this. Conservatives. And people who who support him, as far as I’m concerned, who trust him to do what they say. All right. We’re getting a. This ain’t the guy. So he is the guy who is the conservative that conservatives want to replace Kevin McCarthy with. It’s not Jim Jordan. He’s going to be on the program at the top of the hour. I want to discuss the election with him. Well, who is it? My buddy Chip Roy. Chip Roy can’t get more than 40 votes. And I love him. He’s been my friend for for a long, long time. We supported his election initially. We were friends long before that when he worked for the governor of Texas, when he worked for Ted Cruz. And so he’s a wonderful, wonderful guy, by the way. So who is it? Who is it, Mr. Producer? I’m just curious. And how is it that Kevin McCarthy’s in the same league as McConnell? Tell me, did McCarthy go out and try and blow out some of his own candidates in the general election? No, he didn’t. Did he spend millions of dollars attacking his own nominees or would be nominees in the primaries? No, he didn’t. Do we have anything to show for Kevin McCarthy? Anything? Yes. They won 15 seats two years ago and they’re going to win 11 seats this time. So they’ll win a total of 26. Is that good enough? No. But I’m going to tell you what I think happened in the house. I’m going to tell you what I think happened. And believe it or not. And it really upsets me to tell you that. Part of it comes from Frank Luntz, who backed up into the truth, backed up into the truth. Backed up into the truth at Frank Luntz. You would think he would after 400 appearances on TV. Don’t. Stay with me, folks. We got Jim Jordan and more. I’ll be right back.