On Wednesday’s Mark Levin Show, today marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, a brutal conflict against the Japanese in WWII. It’s very important to remember these battles. One might ponder if, even back then, some accused the U.S. of sparking the conflict by provoking Japan. Meanwhile, there are efforts to paint Zelensky as the enemy, but Putin—steeped in his KGB roots—is the real adversary, untrustworthy and dangerous. A peace between these two nations must not come at any price. The notion that Ukraine must hold an election as a precondition for peace is preposterous. It is particularly ironic that Putin insists on elections in Ukraine while Russia itself lacks free and fair electoral processes. Later, a “Free Palestine” movement emerged in a predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood and escalated into violence. Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres commented, “Violence isn’t an anomaly but a core characteristic of the so-called ‘Free Palestine’ movement, which shows no interest in liberating Palestinians from Hamas.” Why is this receiving very little media coverage? Is it now considered routine? Finally, Democrats are making concerted efforts to find grounds to challenge DOGE’s initiatives aimed at reducing waste, fraud, and abuse. They consistently present reasons to resist such measures.
KATV
Senators introduce resolution to honor 80th anniversary of Iwo Jima battle
The Hill
8 in 10 say Putin should not be trusted: Survey
The Blaze
ABC News faces fury for labeling ‘slain’ Hamas hostages as merely ‘deceased’
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Rough transcription of Hour 1
Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. It’s great to have you all here today. It’s the 80th anniversary. Of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Now, my family knows a little bit about this. My grandfather, my mother’s father was in the fifth Marine Division. For those of you out there who know what I’m talking about. And finally, Redeemer. And almost died on Iwo Jima. Very important to remember these battles. We lost a lot of men, a lot of Marines. Only with Jim, it was nothing but a small volcanic island. But we needed to take each island as we move toward Japan. The thinking was MacArthur’s thinking was that if we leave any islands. With Japanese and their military on those islands, they could sneak up the back while we’re going down the up the island chain toward Japan. So we had to blow out every one of those islands. And we did a tremendous cost. Tremendous cost. I wonder back then if we would have had people in this country. We’ve never done anything but claim to be smarter than everybody else. If they would have said, Well, we provoked that war maverick. We have people who say we provoked the Japanese. Churchill wasn’t very good. It was our fault. This Marxist communist propaganda, this fascist propaganda is now said by some people who claim to be among us. They’re not. They’re not among us. Now. That battle, as I recall off the top of my head, went on for over a month. And like all the battles against the Japanese in the Far East, it was horrendous. My grandfather joined the Marines after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. He was 34 years old. I was as old as you could be and not a day older. And his brother in law. Teddy they called Tug. This is a very, very strong man. Very big hands. These men worked. And worked with their hands. They mean complete high school, let alone college. He joined the Marines, too, and he fought Guadalcanal. Another hell hole. Now, these are men who were men of the street, like so many. Ethnic Americans back then. Most of my ancestors come out of Russia. Depending on when you look at the map. Some come out of Ukraine. I have no love lost for Russia. None. It’s always been a militaristic regime, whether under the czar or under the Communists or now under the KGB, the old KGB, there would be Putin. Funny how his supporters never mention his past, but I’ll get to that. And these were men who made money by scrapping together various jobs. Were the primary ways they made money was a beat up old truck. Which had wooden sides to it. And they would drive from Philadelphia to coal country and Pennsylvania out west, closer to Pittsburgh, for sure, and Philadelphia. It’s a long drive. They bring their shovels and they would physically. Put coal in the back of their truck, filled up as high as they could and they would drive back. To Philadelphia. They would sell the coal and the coal was used. For everything. To cook food, to warm a house in the winter and so forth and so on. And they would do this. As much as they could. And they didn’t earn very much doing it either. But this is what they did. And so they they joined the Marines and they went off to war. They went off to war against the. The Axis powers. The Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany. Imperial Japan and fascistic Italy. But they were sent the Pacific. And they went. They didn’t have to be drafted. They were volunteers. And he saw my grandfather horrific combat, as did his brother in law. And a little dirty secret is we fought wars differently back then. Late at night, early in the morning when it was very dark. The Marines. Could hear some of their comrades had been captured. They could hear them screaming in the night as they were being tortured. And tortured in the most horrendous ways, the way Hamas tortures. Citizens of Israel. And the Japanese were not taking prisoners. They were killing them. And the Marines. After a short while decided that they would take less prisoners to. Many of these so-called prisoners who would put up their hands and surrender actually had booby trapped their bodies. And wound up killing our Marines. So the Marines took less prisoners. As they should, if that isn’t. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And that’s the way you fight when it’s hand-to-hand combat. And that’s the way you fight when everything’s on the line. Your life or theirs. My grandfather was part of an olive, what they called a unit. I guess about a hundred men, as I recall. I recollect this properly. I was a young man when he told me this, and he didn’t tell me much. Matter of fact, I was a young teenager. 11 or 12. He was he and. Couple other of the guys were sent back to get ammunition. They were literally running out of bullets. In the middle of the night. They put their lives on the line, they’ll get more bullets. And they came back with more bullets. In the entire. My unit had been overrun. They were all dead. That’s the way war actually works. They didn’t think about any Geneva Conventions or anything of the sort. The Japanese were brutal fighters. Their religion. In their country. We’re one in the same. The. Emperor was viewed as a godlike figure. Tojo in many ways as well. And they fought to the end. You heard of the kamikazes and the rest. In the end, it’s why Truman had to drop two atomic bombs, put an end to the war, and he would not accept. Anything but unconditional surrender, period. Well, long story short, my grandfather would come home, as did his brother in law. And he lost his voice while he was fighting on Iwo Jima. And he was fighting hard. They all were. He was a big man for his time. He was 6263. I remember when I first saw him, he wore a long leather coat, a Stetson. He had my grandmother and he had divorced and. One day he came into our lives. He reminded me of John Wayne the way he walked. His long leather jacket. Stetson. He walked into the house and he had a Chihuahua in his pocket, which he gave to my mother as a gift because he had two types of dogs at his house. German Shepherds and Chihuahuas. And yet a lot of them. Wasn’t eccentric. It’s just what they did back then. Any talk like this. Because he lost his voice. I’m fighting any which humor. Obviously a nerve effect. This was a very tough man. He’d been a boxer. I told you how he lived his life. He wasn’t broken. He was still tough. But he was different. Different. He taught me. My other grandfather who fought in World War One and taught our troops how to ride motorcycles and told my father it was his father. Don’t ever let your kids ride motorcycles. He had a motorcycle accident once and he spent days spitting up blood out of his lungs. This is the way it was. Back then. Mean, you know about my father. He was 17 and. The Japanese attack, Pearl Harbor, and he signed up. But the Army Air Corps immediately. He passed the test, but he was rejected when they found out his age. And he came back the next year and he was accepted and eventually wound up in the regular army. He was not shipped overseas because the war. But they wanted him at home, number one and PIN number two. The war came to an end. And there are other family members, too. As I’m sure all of you can account for. But these men taught me something. The women in our lives, their wives. My mother taught me something to. Don’t be intimidated. Ever. Don’t ever be intimidated. And if you’re in fear, don’t show it. Always tell the truth, always be moral. And always stick to your principles. Life is too short to compromise your principles. You can compromise to get to your principles. Just don’t compromise your principles. And this is how I live my life and this is how I’ve always lived my life. So when people post tough talk online. They laugh. When they make threats online. To me and others, I laugh. They claim to know what wars like. Most of these people, they don’t the foggiest idea. Most of them have never left the classroom. Where they’re very excited They. If crowds of people who followed them and so forth and so on, but they’ve never been in a real fight. Not a real fight. Physically and not a real fight. Intellectually. And I say this because we are red blooded Americans. We are tough. We can debate. We can argue. We should. It’s called. Free speech. That’s who we are. That’s what we do. But don’t try and intimidate me and don’t try and intimidate other Americans. Because then you’ve crossed the line. And you’re just a punk. My point. I think it’s important. And when we come back, I want you to know my computer is down, my printer’s down. Nothing’s working. I’m going to do this entire show. From between my ears and using my iPhone for sponsors and so forth. But I’m quite capable of doing that. So some of my best shows are done when the computer’s gone south. And a lot of talk about Zelinski. May a lot of people. Not just the president. One guy posted that he’s a CIA plant. I didn’t know the CIA was capable of such things. It’s really capable of doing all the things it’s supposed to do. But the CIA plant, next thing, they’re going to remind us that he’s Jewish. He’s a Jew. So now Zelinski is the enemy. How come they don’t talk about Putin? He’s a KGB plant. He spent about a decade with the KGB from being trained and being a commander. In East Germany with the worst of the worst, the Stasi. He worked with the Stasi. To eliminate opposition. So we want to talk a little bit about Putin. I’ll be right back.
Segment 2
A survey was just done of We the People and 81% of we the people do not trust Putin. Of course not. Putin’s old KGB. And. The way he came to power. Was Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation. And he makes Putin the prime minister. He points him for for who was as the acting president, who had been prime minister for four months. Also appointed by Yeltsin at the time. Now the deal was. Yeltsin had some issues involving gambling and money and so forth, and he was going to be charged in. Putin basically said to him, I’ll clean the slate, but are going to be the top dog. I need to be president. Of the Russian Republic. That was the deal that was made. And there he is going from the KGB. He was a sort of a mobster mayor for a period of time, acting prime minister and then president. I’ll be right back. More to come.
Segment 3
The last credible poll in Ukraine shows Zelensky’s popularity at 57%. We’re going to play an audio from Jack Keane in a moment, who was on fox earlier today with martha maccallum as well. But I do think the extent to which Putin. Has conducted himself needs to be exposed and needs to be explained in a little bit more detail. In a lot more detail. You know, they changed the Constitution amazingly, such as it is. In Russia so he could run for more than two terms. He’s now led that country for a quarter of a century. Without a real or fair election. But they’ve had elections. Dictators know how to how to have elections. And he always gets well over 80%, over 90% usually. Pretty good. But I want you to listen to this. Jack King at the. Got a special medal from President Trump, as I recall. And it deserves it. He’s a great man, a retired four star general. He’s very sober about these things. Medal of Freedom. And this is what he said on Martha MACCALLUM Show on Fox this afternoon. Go. He says that Zelensky has a 4% approval rating. The numbers that we have seen in our close are more in the 50% range north of 50% range. And he’s criticizing Zelensky for not holding elections. Now, clearly, this is something that Russia would like to see happen because they would love to get a Yanukovich or somebody who is much more favorable to Russia into that seat. Is he undermining is the president undermining the election process? And can an election take place in the middle of this war at all? General. Well, a couple of things. Yeah. Zelensky’s polling as of February this month is 57% favorable. It was 52 in December. I mean it was in the nineties and you know, 22 when the war started. But obviously he’s got very favorable ratings. But look at the the constitution that Ukraine has prohibits elections. When you declare martial law because of a state of war takes place. And obviously, you know, the incumbent who is trying to run a war to be involved in an election and bringing people together in primaries and other elections puts the people at risk. There’s two other parts of that martial law. If you’re 18 to 60 years of age in a male, you can’t leave the country. And also, they’re curbing civil liberties, particularly freedom of movement, by curfews in a contested in the contested areas, so that the fact that the constitution is driving this, the parliament, bipartisan support for all the extensions they’ve had to the martial law. So they are acting democratically, in my judgment, and abiding by the Constitution. And also the parliament is supporting it, which represents the people throughout throughout the country. These are democratic action has taken place in a democratic country. I don’t believe we should try and push elections on Zelensky during the middle of this war. I think if there is a peace agreement, I think Zelensky and others and the people themselves will demand an election and it would likely take place assuming the peace agreement has some real legs to it. There you have it. Look, I don’t have a problem if. If it’s the position of our administration. To cut back on support for Ukraine, which I oppose, by the way, then so be it. Elections have consequences. So be it. But I want make sure the facts are on the table. And you, the American people, draw your own conclusion. MAGA doesn’t support Putin either. MAGA doesn’t support Iran getting nuclear weapons either. People claim to be speaking for you. Who are not speaking for you. They were in media who were in other positions and so forth. And if you know the full extent of their views and if you know the actual situation with regard to Zelensky, Zelensky ordered martial law. That’s what the Constitution. They’re compelled. Zelensky hasn’t called for an election. That’s what the Constitution there compels. Now I’m waiting for the first free election for Vladimir Putin. I mean, this is almost comical in a sick way that Putin is demanding an election. Why is he demanding an election in Ukraine when he doesn’t have free and real elections in his own country? And why does he why does he get to call the shots when in fact he murders people who dare to challenge him? All the famous suicide jumpers. But worse than that, he throws them in prison, gives them 19 year sentences. They get sick. He sends hitmen, assassins into London, into Germany to kill anybody who opposes him. There’s not a single independent media outlet left. In the whole of Russia. Shuts them down. He kills journalists, too. This is what we’re dealing with, again, all KGB. And not just KGB. He was in like Flynn with the Stasi in East Germany. So. I don’t know why their people. That not only oppose Zelensky, but seem to support Putin. It’s bizarre. But that’s not me. That’s not you. That’s not the men and women who fought our wars, who fought in World War Two or Vietnam or Korea. Who fought in Iraq and fought in Afghanistan. This isn’t them. These are a handful of pseudo intellectuals. Funded by the likes of George Soros and. Charles Koch. They’re not alone. Others, too. Adopting policies. That in many ways are un-American, in my view. Policies that if they had espouses policies not that long ago, people would have wonder if they’re on the take or who they’re working for, something like that. Not that they are, but they would wonder. So Zelensky’s latest poll is at 57%. The Parliament, with all parties in the Parliament support what he’s doing. They’re trying to survive. Ukraine did not invade Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine and to Crimea. And is now completely. Incorporated it into Russia. Before that, Russia invaded the country of Georgia, which had been a captive state and basically took over for Georgia. And before Putin invaded Ukraine. He wrote about it or somebody wrote for him and he made this pronouncement. We’ve talked about it here at great length. I read from it to tell you. As it was interpreted in English. About how Ukraine was always Russian, which is simply not true. And he went even further that where there are Russian speaking peoples. It’s Russian. That’s what Hitler said. Where there are German speaking people, it’s German. And of course, they go beyond it. But as eyes are set on Moldavia, his eyes are set on Poland, His eyes are set on Romania. How do we know it? Because either he or his surrogates have said so. It’s a bad guy. It’s a bad guy who who helped Assad kill half a million Syrians. Slaughtered them. Gassing them, mowing them down. There was a revolution in Syria, as you well know, pushed inside out, which meant Russia no longer had a puppet state there. And let’s talk about money and. If Ukraine doesn’t know where half the money went, that is outrageous. I think Selenski said it. That is unacceptable. And we shouldn’t be schmooze about this. We shouldn’t just write checks left and right like Biden did. That’s stupid. That’s stupid. I don’t know if it’s cost us 350 billion, if it’s cost us 1 billion and you don’t know what half of it went. That’s bad enough. We spend money here. Trillions. We don’t even know where it is. 4.7 trillion we can’t track. And we’re not even in the middle of a civil war. But that’s unacceptable, too. No excuses. But I want to add another fact. After World War Two. And even up to today. Your grandparents, your parents and you. I’ve spent trillions of dollars. Trillions of dollars. To build a military. To protect us from, among others, but specifically the old Soviet Union and Russia. We have spent trillions of dollars on hardware and technological development. On submarines. On bombers, on jets. Trillions of dollars to protect us from us. All enemies. But for the vast period of time since the end of World War Two, it was the Russians. The Russians. Ukraine doesn’t have any nukes. In 1994, we, the British and the Russians, signed a deal that all those nukes would be given voluntarily by Ukraine, then a separate country to Russia in exchange for an agreement that if Russia is invaded excuse me, that if Ukraine’s invaded Russia, Britain and the United States will assist them. Obviously, that didn’t mean crap. And they lost their leverage when they gave up all their nuclear weapons, but they were pressured to do it. You were pressured to do it. Russia has an enormous number of sophisticated nuclear missiles. They do this to try and even the score because of the the weakness of their conventional weaponry. Most of those missiles are aimed at us. They could blow the United States off the face of the Earth 500 times. How many times have I come on the air to give you stories having nothing to do with Ukraine or the war between Russia and Ukraine by Russian jets and bombers? Threatening our jets and bombers off the coast of Alaska as the senators and the governor in Alaska. What they think about this, it’s constant. You have close surrogates for Putin saying Alaska. There was a fraudulent sale that Alaska still belongs to them, and this is becoming increasingly prevalent in their propaganda. Donald Trump saying we need to take Greenland. Why? Because of what the Russians and the communist Chinese are doing with Antarctica. Russia has nuclear submarines, too, that shoots nuclear missiles. And they sit off our shores outside our navigable waters in international waters. That’s where they sit. Because our subs are not their subs, nuclear subs. They will survive a nuclear war. Nothing else will. But they will. The Cuban Missile Crisis so we can go on and on. About what took place. And Putin has said multiple times he’s even written. But the greatest catastrophe. If not in modern world history. World history was the collapse of the Soviet Union greatest catastrophe. Now, from his viewpoint, that certainly is true, but his viewpoints not our viewpoint. It’s one of the greatest things that could have happened. Now, Ukraine hasn’t asked for any of our troops. Ukraine doesn’t have the industrial might that a Russia has or China. A relatively small population of around 40 million people. Mostly agricultural country. Mostly an agricultural country. They didn’t start this war. Where were they supposed to do? Roll over and play dead. 81% of the American people do not trust Putin because 81% of the American people are smart. Because the men and women in this country who have been in the military, who fought wars, they understand. Their families understand? I understand. There needs to be peace between these two countries. And I think Donald Trump is uniquely able to do that, to pull it off. I really do. I think. But there cannot be pissed at any cost. Reagan used to talk about this. Churchill used to talk about it. FDR used to talk about it. Patton used to talk about it. There is no peace with slavery. Ukraine is making preposterous demands that cannot be met. That’s another problem. That’s another problem. But the idea that Ukraine must hold elections in violation of its own constitution is a condition for peace or. The Ukraine must give up more territory as a condition for peace. After. Understand, the Ukrainian people don’t want to do that. That’s why Zelinsky said 57%. Higher than most politicians in our own country. I mean, we got one senator said we ought to pull out a needle. These are knucklehead pull out of Nevada. Pull out a native. And so I said the other night, Do they know why there’s Naito? NATO’s here to protect you and me. And a lot of our forefathers fought, bled, died in Europe, and we’re supposed to surrender it to Russia and China. And all the rest of these countries, they would roll through and take it in 2 seconds. So understand when you hear people talk like this or posts like that, what you’re dealing with. On the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. We’ll be right back.
Segment 4
As of last year, Russia has 5580 nuclear warheads, by far the largest in the world, and they’ve deployed 1710 nuclear missiles, most of which are aimed at us and our interests. Ukraine doesn’t have a single warhead, and so they have nothing aimed at anybody. We’ve spent trillions and trillions of dollars since the end of World War Two to defend our country militarily. We spend, uh, give or take, about 700 billion a year going on. 800 billion a year. For our military now, among others, to defend ourselves from Russia, China, but Russia, not the Ukraine. So we’re spending an enormous amount of money. We talk about money. We should only talk about the amount of money we give Ukraine to defend itself. But the amount of money we spend to defend ourselves because of Putin and Russia. Why is it never discussed? Why? Quite serious. Doing my best, Mr. Producer. Here we go. Tons more to get to. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be right back.