On Friday’s Mark Levin Show, the latest spending bill has passed in the House. This is good news, but we need to do something about the massive budget. The bigger problem is that the system is broken, it’s corrupt. About 80% of Republicans in the House voted yes for the bill. Will the Republicans who voted against this bill have a problem with Trump’s populist agenda going forward? This is concerning because we must be united to advance Trump’s agenda. Also, are tax cuts required to be offset? If that’s the case radical Democrats will do everything to kill them and would vote with freedom caucus members. This could be problematic to Trump’s promises of cutting taxes and no tax on tips. Yes, we need off-sets but not for tax cuts because that’s not government spending. Later, Newt Gingrich calls in to discuss the House spending bill that passed. Trump and Elon Musk saved America billions of dollars. They took off thousands of pages without even being in office. Also, is George Mason University cultivating a nest of anti-Israel and antisemitic terrorist supporters? A student was arrested for “distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of the commission of a federal crime of violence” to an FBI informant. Finally, Benjamin Netanyahu will not be able to attend the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp fearing he may be arrested by the Poland government for ‘war crimes.’ This is outrageous.
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The Speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances.
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The 34 House Republicans that voted no and 15 that did not vote.
The Daily Signal
Is This DC-Area University Becoming a Hotbed of Terrorist Supporters?
The Times of Israel
Netanyahu won’t attend Auschwitz liberation anniversary event, fearing arrest by Poland
Jerusalem Post
Third time this year: Shots fired at Jewish school in Canada
Daily Mail
Interactive map reveals disturbing pattern in drone sightings across the US
Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call
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. Looks like this last iteration, bill spending bill is going to pass overwhelmingly. Looks like about 80% of the Republicans in the House are voting for it, by my calculation. Looks like most of the Democrats are voting for it. I’m a multiple minds on this, to be perfectly honest with you. We have a Democrat Senate, a Democrat president, and we keep going through this with a very small majority in the House of Representatives. And I’m very sympathetic to the minority in the Republican Party in the House that says, no, that’s enough. We’ve got to start somewhere. We got to start somewhere. Elon Musk put out a statement. The speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances. It went from a bill that weighed lbs to a bill that weighed ounces was like 112 pages. The ball should now be in the Democrat court. I’ve heard President Trump of my guess says he’s pretty okay with this, too. As I understand it. Because there’s not a lot of transparency by anybody on anything on any side, is that the complaint is you’re not offsetting about $100 billion in spending or 50 billion or whatever it is. Now, most of that money’s going towards. Female activity and farmers. Farmers that are desperate at this point because of certain events that have taken place and. We know about what took place in North Carolina and Georgia and some of these other states. So that’s been added into this. It’s pretty much otherwise a bare bones bill. But that money is not offset. And so some are saying that’s enough already with the debt. With the 80% of the Republicans seem to be saying, and I guess Elon Musk as well as. This is the end of the year. What do you want us to do? What do you want us to do? We don’t have the votes to do what you want to do. We just don’t have the votes. What do you want us to do? And Schumer’s going to block it in the Senate. Biden’s not going to sign it. And what you’re going to wind up doing? You’re going to drag this in for a couple more weeks and actually interfere with the the inaugural events because they can’t go forward with the inaugural events. If the government shutdown. Now my view is different. My view is this is all tiddlywinks. All. When. As I wrote and posted on Twitter as the Daily Signal picked up. We’re talking about a pittance here, a pittance of money. The budget’s almost $7 trillion. The Army budget. That’s over $3 trillion. The off budget battle, over $300 billion. You see what I’m saying? And so if all this drama. All this drama. I don’t mind. The drama doesn’t bother me if the government shuts down because the government actually never shuts down. 74% of the government doesn’t even require. Annual budget votes. Did you know that? And many of you benefit from them. They’re called entitlements. I don’t call them entitlements. Social Security, Medicare, you’ve paid into them. But there are entitlements within that. With that allotment of money. That’s 74% of the money. When you add in. The debt interest on the debt which has to be paid. When you add in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, these are considered off budget items, Social Security and Medicare, because you pay into them with your taxes. The interest is the interest. You have to pay for it. Veterans benefits. These other benefits, so-called. They’re all untouchable. They’re not part of the regular budget process. So when the so-called government shuts down, you’re talking about 26% of the government. It’s called discretionary spending. That’s what they call it, half of discretionary spending. 45% is for defense. So you’re really talking about 55% of 26%. So you’re talking about, let’s say, 15% of the overall budget every year is what they’re fighting over. And defense. That’s why I watch these things in other amazement. Sometimes I just do. I see Rand Paul saying, you know, this is out of control. Mike Lee, we need an experiment. These guys aren’t talking about Social Security. These guys aren’t talking about Medicare. They’re not talking about Medicaid. They’re not talking about the 68% of the budget. That’s so-called entitlements and the interest. There’s not a damn thing you can do about it because you got to pay the debt. Nobody is. Our buddy Chip isn’t talking about. None of them are. And so they’re fighting over 15% and it’s not even 15%. They’re fighting over some fraction of a percent of the 15%. Do you see my point, Mr. Pitt, is. So I come behind this microphone. I talk about convention of states. Do they talk about convention of states? Never. Because Washington is not going to fix Washington. That’s the bottom line. Congress is responsible for laying taxes, for spending and borrowing. Specifically the House. Whether the Republicans control it, the Democrats control, or whether it’s a large number of Republicans or a large number of Democrats. They can’t get a budget system in place. There’s supposed to be a budget system. They’re supposed to be a budget process. The federal budget for whatever the reason. Goes from October 1st to September 30th. And here we are talking about a spending bill. Right before Christmas, five days before Christmas and Hanukkah. For the year that’s passed already. So I’m not impressed with these so-called conservatives. I’m just not. Or anybody else, for that matter. But if you’re going to talk about you’re concerned seriously about the debt because there are people who aren’t on Capitol Hill. In fact, I would say majority. I’m. But if you’re going to say you’re concerned about the debt. Then when I jack like it. Why don’t you talk about what I’m talking about? Because they don’t want to. Because they’re afraid they’ll lose their seats. That’s why. It all comes down to immorality. This is all immoral. That’s the bottom line. I don’t attack Mike Johnson any more than I would attack him and McCarthy won’t because they’re they’re caught in this system. It’s not a system of their making. And you might say, well, why don’t they fix it? Because they don’t have a majority in their party that want to fix it. The other party helped create it. The other party controls the Senate. The other party controls the presidency. Exactly what is a Speaker McCarthy or a Speaker Johnson supposed to do? I’m quite serious, and I’m sure that’s why Elon Musk himself said the speaker did a good job here. Let’s go to Mike Johnson live right now. Go ahead. The right thing and having gotten this done now is the last order of business for the year. We are set up for a big and important new start in January. We can’t wait to get to that point. We encouraged swift passage in the Senate. Now they need to do their job, as the House just did, and we will all go home. I want to wish everybody a merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy holidays and a happy New Year, because I hope not to see you until we get back after that. And so so we we I was in constant contact with with President Trump throughout this process. I spoke with him most recently about 45 minutes ago. He knew exactly what we were doing and why. And and this is a good outcome for the country. I think he certainly is happy about this outcome as well. Elon Musk and I talked to within about an hour ago and and we talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job. And I said, hey, you want to be speaker of the House? I don’t know. He said, it may be the hardest job in the world. I think it is, but we’re going to get through this. We are going to unify this country and we are going to bring the America first agenda to the people beginning in January. We cannot wait to get started. I hope you all have great hope. I kind of agree with what he’s trying to say there and what he did say there. We’ll have the Senate, we’ll have the presidency. We’ll have a bare majority in the House, but it will be much easier for us to get together and work on this. And here’s the truth. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen will be completely on the Republicans down. Whether you think it should be or not, Whether I think it should be or not, it will be. It will be. That’s just the bottom line. And so I look at McCarthy, I look at Johnson, and I say to myself, What do people expect them to do exactly? Because the bigger problem is the system is broken. It’s corrupt. That’s what it is. That’s why I wrote this book, Liberty Amendments. That’s why Mark Meckler and I have talked about convention of states. That’s why his organization has broken its ask, going from one state legislature to another to another. You had, what, 30, 35, 38 Republican votes representing about 20% of the Republicans in the House. Okay. This thing passed with well over two thirds, almost three fourths of the vote, the House of Representatives. So we don’t control the House. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t control the House. It doesn’t even control the Republican caucus. And this is my point. This is my point. Rand Paul doesn’t represent even a small percentage of the Republicans in the Senate. And they tried to put Ron Johnson excuse me, they tried to put Rick Scott, I guess Rick Scott in his majority. It didn’t even come close. Okay. So what do we do? We keep whining, keep taking votes. Keep replacing leaders. Well, that’s not going to do a damn thing. It’s just not. And the I mean, Ron Paul can’t get elected the Republican leader. Tom Massie can’t get elected the Republican leader in the House. So. So what are we going to do? Keep shooting spitballs. Ken, that doesn’t mean you have to go. I’m one of those who doesn’t mind a government shutdown. I’ve been sitting by this microphone talking about government shutdowns for 25 years. They were actually work. It’s okay. But even when they work, to what end? There’s some small percentage of discretionary spending. Wow. That’s a big accomplishment. We have a bigger problem. A much bigger problem. And I don’t know if we can fix it at this point. I’m a skeptic. I don’t know. I just don’t know. But there is. Now, listen to me. This is very important. There’s a complete disconnect. These guys are working within a system that’s dysfunctional and then they attack the leader that’s voted by the overwhelming majority of their party, the Republican Party. But they don’t fight the system. They don’t fight the system. They don’t have the votes. They keep running up the up the mountain. They keep getting picked off and they keep running up again. They keep getting picked off, and then they blame the. General. We keep running up the mound. We keep getting picked up. You’re running up the wrong mountain. It’s the wrong man. It’s like Pickett’s Charge. I feel like this is Pickett’s charge all the time. It’s okay. And again, I told you I don’t mind a government shutdown. There were six of them under Reagan. There’s been 21 of them since the 1970s. There were two of them under Donald Trump. Remember our friend Ted Cruz? He led a big one to fight Obamacare. He came under attack. Mitch McConnell’s ideologically, almost religiously opposed to them. He’s a buffoon. He’s a fool. It does create leverage. It actually in the mid to long term helps with respect to that small percentage of discretionary spending. But what are we going to do about Social Security? The trustees say it’s going broke. What are we going to do about Medicare? The trustees say it’s going broke. You know what we’re going to do about Social Security? There’s a bill on the Senate floor that’s going to pass very soon by Schumer. It’s got huge bipartisan support in the House and the Senate. And you know what it does. Mr. Producer adds millions of people to an expanded Social Security payment. All the individuals. Who have government pensions besides Social Security, they don’t get a full Social Security pension. The theory is they’re both kind of government pensions. And so we will offset some of the government pensions from the Social Security pensions. And so they’ve decided, no, it’s not fair. Those people should get full Social Security pensions, too. Okay, fine. Where is that money coming from? Absolutely nowhere. You know how much that adds to the expenses on Social Security? Over $200 billion in some cases. The estimate is $600 billion. So what does that mean exactly? It’s fair. But Social Security is going to collapse sooner. So what are the Republicans and Democrats going to do about it? They just added more spending to it. They’re not going to do a damn thing about it. I’ll be right back.
Segment 2
The speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances. Went from a bill that weighed lbs to a bill that weighed ounces. I’d seen Elon Musk and Mike Lee said Elon Musk should be the speaker. Well, now that Elon Musk supports the bill that was just passed overwhelmingly by Republicans and Democrats. Does he still view that way? How about Rand Paul? You understand, folks, that some of the people who these guys would like to be speaker? It’s an odd thing for senators to be talking about who they want to be speaker when they can’t even control who their majority leader is. But that’s all right. Donald Trump would oppose. He made a pose, somebody from the Freedom Caucus being the speaker who could never get elected speaker anyway because they can’t get the other 80% of the Republicans in the House to vote for them. So why don’t they just chirp away all the time? How I coyote’s all that is this. What does it contribute to exactly? I’ll be right back.
Segment 3
The last live Life, Liberty and Levin in programs will be tomorrow night, Saturday and Sunday night, 8 p.m. Eastern. If you can’t watch it live, maybe you’re watching college football or Sunday night football. Please go ahead and DVR the program. You’re not going to want to miss these programs. Saturday, we’re going to have Representative Loudermilk who’s going to discuss in detail. That January six report, Liz Cheney, and so much more that you haven’t heard before. And my second guess is a dear friend who I’ve known for about 20 years, Stephen Smith. Absolutely fascinating. As you will see, Sunday, 8 p.m. Eastern time. We all have Senator Cruz. We’ll discuss this, this debacle. And we’ll also Victor Davis Hanson, two very smart people, two of the smartest. And in less than an hour next hour, we’re going to have Newt’s Newt Gingrich on the program. And why Newt Gingrich, number one, is brilliant. Number two is a historian. A number three, he was an incredibly successful speaker of the House. The government shut down when he was speaker of the House and he was able to corral the Democrats. To force Clinton to balance the budget. And so you talk to successful people. Not the whiners and the complainer is not the big mouth. You talk to people who’ve been successful doing these things and other things for their input. Now, the fact of the matter is something interesting is happening here that nobody wants to talk about. So I’ll mention it. I touched on it, but I want to elaborate a little bit and I want to move on. President Trump. In the speaker on this bill were in constant contact, the speaker said, including up to 45 minutes before the vote. Elon Musk and the speaker are in constant contact because he will be heading that. That program is intended to streamline the government. So they’re coordinating. It’s not that Elon Musk is president, it’s that these guys are smart and they’re trying to do the right thing, which makes it hard for the Democrats to actually understand what’s going on or even give a damn about what’s going on. But them aside. So this effort has been supported, this last one. By Elon Musk and effectively by President Trump. We’ve been looking for any post. We haven’t seen any. So I asked myself. The 30 or 40 Republicans who voted against this and block I might have been one of them voted against it, too, if I were a congressman. But that’s not my point. Are they going to have a problem with Trump? Mr. Produce. You see my point? Are they going to have a problem with Trump? And. I don’t mean a political problem, an emotional problem. No, I’m talking about are they going to have a problem? With the so-called populist agenda. Because populism is not conservatism. It’s not traditional conservatism. It’s different. Now there are overlaps, don’t get me wrong. There are overlaps, but it’s different. Tariffs as an example. Or. Significant interference. Well, private business, for an example. It’s not complete free market economics. You can see how. Now the head of the Teamsters Union, who, by the way, I despise this guy. I really do. Sounds like a Marxist punk to me, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. I do not despise the Teamsters. Happen to know a lot of Teamsters. That’s not my issue. This guy sounds like a Marxist, and he should have endorsed Trump because the vast majority, or at least the majority of his membership, supported Trump who voted for Trump, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. So he’s considered courageous for endorsing nobody. And that’s not courageous. That’s gutless. But there you are. I’m just making a point. And by the way, the Teamsters endorsed Reagan twice, endorsed them. As an example of a real Teamsters leader. It turns out that guy turned out to be corruptness to produce. I think he went to prison. But nonetheless, there was a Teamster leader who actually endorsed and did what his membership wanted him to do. It’s a secondary point. So as I watch this, I see something a little differently, and it’s concerning to me. We’re going to have to be absolutely united, especially in the House, to advance the president’s agenda, which he ran on and won in a landslide. If one or two or five members on the Republican side have their own agenda, their own beliefs, and they think that they should trump Trump’s, we’re going to have a problem. We’re going to have a problem. You know, it’s like these these cabinet picks. Their President Trump has his mansion. I don’t like the one that he picked for labor secretary, but you don’t hear me leading LA Knights and millions of people to fighter y because I think Trump should get what he wants. And if she turns out to be awful, he should fire her. But this is the team he wants, and he won in a landslide. And we can’t keep picking him to pieces. Oh, he picked this one and he picked that one. And he picked that one. That’s what the Democrats do. That’s what the Democrats do. Trump wants when he becomes president, a clean slate. He doesn’t want up the fight over the debt ceiling. He does want to fight over these things. He wants a clean slate. To push his agenda. And I understand that position, don’t you? So these battles that have been going on for several years now, he’s saying, look. I need a clean slate. I brought in a majority in the Senate. I was able to help us hold onto the House. Well run the entire executive branch. We wanted to deal with the Bidens and the Kamala Harris. We wanted to deal with these out of control agencies. I’m going to bring Musk in here and Vivek in here. We’re going to take a good look at this. I’m going to bring in a team in here that I. Going to secure the border. We’re going to build up the fence. We’re going to slash. Wasteful, saying we’re going to do all these. Well, he can’t do these things if we don’t. Help him do these things. So this is going to be very interesting. And beyond interesting, it could become problematic. We’ll see. You’re in the right place, You’re going to want to stick with me in this show. Trust me. Trust me, others are going to be very surface level. They’re going to be beating their chests. They’re going to say things they think you want to hear. We don’t do that here, which is why you’re here. So those who voted against this last iteration and I said, look, I might have been one of them. I don’t know. I don’t even know what the hell is in the bill. Exactly. Nobody does outside of the people who voted. It wasn’t a heavy duty long. Bill was like 112 pages, give or take. You should be able to read that before you vote, I would think. But they’re effectively voting against what I think Trump and Elon Musk and the team were in favor of. So they’re going to have to come to grips with this. This is probably why Trump lashed out against Chip Roy yesterday. They could. The hell does he think he is? And he probably is annoy were Roy to begin with, because Roy backed openly, of course, Ron DeSantis against him. So there’s all this stuff going on out there. My view is this. There are ways and there have to be ways to be faithful. To constitutional conservatism and back the one man who can help turn this country around. Because I don’t know of any other right now. Just like the Tories. In Britain. What? Churchill. They didn’t agree with everything Churchill was doing. But they knew they had a tremendous statesman. Not always, by the way. A lot of them hated him. He was in the wilderness, as they call it, for a long period of time. And he made it easy. For himself to be in the wilderness. I don’t need to get into all that. But when the time came. One of the greatest leaders in world history. And I think Donald Trump can be that, too. If the Chihuahuas and the Yorkies don’t bite his ankles endlessly. If there are big issues and big fights, I get it. And I understand this fight over the C.R.. But this honestly is chump change. Chump change. Deals with a small percentage of a small percentage of the budget. Again, I understand the fight and I agree that all that. All that pork and gravy that was in that first bill was unnecessary. I got it. This last bill was stripped down. Most of the spending goes to help the farmers. It goes to help people in North Carolina and Georgia and other people. Others are saying, well, there’s still too much for that. I doubt that. I don’t know. But the main argument, as I understand it is there’s no offsets, so we create more debt. And of course, that’s a huge problem. There are things that the conservatives in the House and the Senate can do and should do. Maybe I’ll send each one of them My book, The Liberty Amendments. Or maybe I’ll send them some old ideas. That are great ideas from Milton Friedman on how to limit spending. You know, there’s great proposals out there, not just mine, but Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, a whole lot of brilliant people and men over the last half century more. Over the last half century more. Why don’t they use those ideas? If they’re going to fight, why don’t they fight for big things, systemic change, things that we can try to enshrine into the system? Because even if they win the day on the C.R.. Entitlements are going to collapse. And it’s going to take the whole damn economy with it. Even if we win today on the C.R., from a strictly fiscal perspective, it’s not enough. It doesn’t even touch the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg. You see, my point must be looser. I’m not trying to upset you folks. I’m trying to add a little reality to this. It’s sometimes these guys beating their chests and patting themselves in the back of the head. In the end, they’re really no better than the others. I told you about this guy Biggs in Arizona when he was the Senate president, that he single handedly blocked a vote. To support convention of states. As soon as they boomed him out and gave him a raise. And gave him a bigger possession position as a member of the House of Representatives. They passed it in Arizona. They passed it. He seems to be happy yelling about stuff, voted on the speaker, talking about what he would do. Great. Who cares? You go nowhere fast. This is why I’m not invited to all these Republican things. Mr.. But is this why I’m not invited? You know, I don’t care. This idea. Will the speaker stay or go? This is all B.S.. It’s a shiny object. The speaker should stay. McCarthy should have stayed. The institution’s broken. One man can fix it with a majority of a handful and even a smaller majority next time around. I’ll be right back.
Segment 4
Now as I’m learning more about this. So there was $100 billion in this bill for disaster aid, the hurricane battered areas in the southeast and other states. There was 30 billion in aid for farmers and a one year extension of current agriculture policy. These were the main items that were not offset. Because they couldn’t get the Democrats to go along or a lot of the Republicans. And so as I understand it, that’s why. Those who voted against it voted against it. I’m not sure what Donald Trump, Elon Musk or the Speaker can do about that. Considering the numbers in the House now, it is more than that. The measure did not include an extension of the debt limit. You have to increase the debt limit. An extension of that limit is a major setback for the Speaker and President Donald Trump. So that means this fight over the debt limit will occur relatively early on, probably in the first or second quarter of the Trump presidency. And Trump was thinking, I don’t want to deal with this. I want to deal with extending the tax cuts or taxes are going to shoot up. And so this is going to be very interesting. It’s going to be very interesting because President Trump not only wants to extend the current tax cuts, but he wants to provide no taxes on tips. He wants to provide no taxes on overtime. He wants to provide things like that. And the way the number crunchers, the green eyeshade types in Washington, are going to work on this, they’re going to say, okay, that’s going to add to the debt. And what I assume. Chip, Roy and the others in the Freedom Caucus are going to say, yes, okay, it’s going to add to the debt and we need an offset. And the Democrats are going to say, like hell, we’re not giving in an offset for tax cuts. Whether it’s. No taxes on tips whether it’s no taxes on the on overtime. Plus they’re going to want to screw Trump politically. And so this is what President Trump is hoping to avoid. And this actually, I understand, is what the speaker was trying to avoid. I haven’t talked to either. I’m just looking at the numbers here. I’m just looking at the numbers here. So 130 billion in so-called emergency funding. Has been approved, but without offsets. The debt limit has not been extended. Which means when Donald Trump. Pushes early on. They get these additional tax cuts in and to extend the existing tax cuts. He’s now going to have to fight. Over the debt limit and offsets. And so this is why he got pissed off at Chip Roy and some of these other guys. I’m guessing he just walking out because he doesn’t want the things that he promised that people to get him elected. He doesn’t want those things to be endangered. That’s my guess. I’ll be right back.