Levin, Mark LLF rdio

primary on --> nunberg --> djt

SEE IRAN WAR 3

see 719 bak

mark levin, radio, ass't to meese  landmark legal fdn  during iran contra?!

-=-=

-=-=

STUDY: Figures on Fox News' key programs have called for escalation in the Iran war more than 250 times since the initial ceasefire

MMA

STUDY: Figures on Fox News' key programs have called for escalation in the Iran war more than 250 times since the initial ceasefire

Mark Levin, Brian Kilmeade, and Gen. Jack Keane accounted for nearly 90 calls for escalation

Written by Harrison Ray

Research contributions from Isabella Sherk, Rob Savillo, Tyler Monroe & Casey Wexler

Published 08/26/26

In the four months since the initial ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, Fox News figures have continuously warmongered. Throughout the cycle of ceasefire violations and stalled peace talks, individuals on Fox have urged the president to “decapitate and destroy this regime,” send Iran “back to the Stone Age,” and urged him to “send the SEALs in and blow something up just for grins.”

Media Matters found that 7 key shows on Fox News — which includes Fox's evening programming as well as some shows hosted by commentators whom President Donald Trump has praised or promoted during the Iran war — called for escalatory action in the Iran War at least 252 times since the initial ceasefire agreement on April 7.

Key Findings

From April 7, when the U.S. and Iran reached the first ceasefire of the war, through August 6, network personalities and guests called for the Trump administration to escalate its war in Iran at least 252 times. Over the period, figures on Fox frequently argued for military strikes, ground invasions or seizing territory, regime change, arming Iranians, or attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Just 5 individuals — host Brian Kilmeade (35 calls for escalation), host Mark Levin (32), Fox News senior strategic analyst retired Gen. Jack Keane (22), former national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (16), and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen (13) — accounted for nearly half of all these calls for escalation. These 5 figures have all played a prominent role at some point in informing Trump's foreign policy, at times specifically on Iran. Trump has discussed Iran with Kilmeade directly and encouraged people to watch Levin's coverage of Iran, while Thiessen and Keane reportedly have his ear on Iran strategy as well. Kellogg has played high-level national security roles in both Trump administrations.

Top 5 warmongers on key Fox News shows

The network's flagship 3-hour morning show, Fox & Friends, led all shows in our study with 92 calls for escalation, followed by Life, Liberty & Levin (50), Hannity (35), and Jesse Watters Primetime (32). Laura Ingraham's show The Ingraham Angle, which has notably pushed back on the war at times, produced only 8 total calls for escalation in our study.

Key shows calling for escalation in Iran war NO GRAPH

Calls for escalation consisted of several types of arguments

The arguments within these calls for escalation fell in 1 of 5 categories — Fox figures arguing for resumed or expanded military strikes, ground invasions or the seizure of territory, further regime change, arming the Iranian populace, or attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure.

All together, there were 299 unique arguments made over the course of the study period (calls for escalation could — and often did — include more than one argument).

Arguments calling to escalate Iran war

Speakers consistently advocated to resume or expand military strikes

As the Trump administration repeatedly announced imminent peace deals throughout the four-month period, network guests and personalities argued for the resumption or expansion of military strikes. Over that period, speakers on the 7 Fox News programs argued for resuming or expanding military strikes at least 119 times.

Brian Kilmeade, who was the network's chief advocate pushing for military strikes, argued 21 times in favor of additional strikes. Kilmeade frequently argued that the U.S. should resume military action, saying he doesn’t “see any scenario” in which the Trump administration would not have to “go back in and finish the job.” The Fox & Friends host argued that “the quicker we start again, it’s the quicker we end it.”

Fox & Friends led the key shows by a large margin, arguing for resuming or expanding strikes at least 65 times.

Jack Keane (14) and Marc Thiessen (11) followed Kilmeade with the most arguments to resume or expand military strikes. On June 5, in the middle of the supposed ceasefire, Keane said, “Let's go big, take down as much of their capability as we possibly can, and get these guys as close to collapse as a military operation can possibly achieve.”

Video

Citation

From the June 5, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

Speakers frequently suggested deploying ground troops or seizing territory

Throughout the war, network guests and personalities frequently advocated deploying ground troops or seizing territory. Suggestions from these figures included seizing Kharg Island or other islands in the region, taking further military action in the Strait of Hormuz including reclaiming or occupying the waterway, and for the Trump administration to go in and physically seize enriched uranium. In total, network guests and personalities argued for deploying ground troops or seizing territory at least 63 times.

Brian Kilmeade led all speakers, arguing at least 13 times that the U.S. should deploy more troops or seize territory, often focusing on U.S. control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Keith Kellogg argued to deploy ground troops or seize territory at least 12 times, the next most of any speaker, often focused on seizing Kharg Island. Kellogg acknowledged in his appearances that he has "repeatedly" and "consistently" argued for taking Kharg Island, adding the president should “put a provisional government in charge.”

Video

Citation

From the May 18, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Speakers often advocated for further regime change in Iran

After the initial assassination strikes on the first day of the war, network guests and personalities continued to argue for further regime change at least 51 times.

Mark Levin led all speakers, arguing for this at least 11 times. His show Life, Liberty, & Levin led the charge with at least 21 such arguments. Levin frequently argued for the Trump administration to “eliminate” the regime, insisted that nothing would change Iran “except its destruction,” and argued that “the regime itself must be pulled out by the roots.”

Video

Citation

From the April 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, & Levin

Speakers pushed for arming Iranians

Network guests and personalities argued for the Trump administration to arm or fund the Iranian populace or Iranian opposition groups in their fight against the Iranian regime at least 42 times.

Life, Liberty, & Levin (27 arguments) led all shows by a large margin, followed by Hannity (12).

Mark Levin was seemingly the network's chief proponent of arming Iranians, arguing for this 22 times. Levin leaned on comparisons to the Reagan administration, saying in one segment, “We need to arm the Iranian people the way we armed other entities, freedom fighters, throughout the world under the Reagan administration,” and in another, touted the “success” of the Reagan administration when they “armed the freedom fighters.”

Video

From the May 9, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, & Levin

Speakers advocated for attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure

With network guests and personalities seeming to grow frustrated with stalling negotiations, speakers resorted to arguing for attacks on civilian, oil, or other non-military infrastructure at least 24 times over the four month period.

Fox News host Sean Hannity proposed a campaign to “take out 10%” of Iran's infrastructure every three days until “everything is wiped out.” Keane argued to “destroy and dismantle” the country's energy infrastructure “on the mainland.” And Fox host Jesse Watters repeatedly touted Trump's so-called “bridge and power plant day.”

Video

Citation

From the April 7, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five

Fox News' warmongering rhetoric has real-world implications

Donald Trump's close relationship with Fox News has blurred the line between the network's political commentary and unofficial policymaking. The president watches the channel “religiously,” its personalities have direct access to him, and their on-air demands often worm their way into the administration's political agenda.

And while the promised “four to five week” war — which has strained household budgets, failed to achieve its stated objectives, and killed thousands overseas, including at least 18 U.S. troops — ran on, many of Fox News' personalities and guests spent their time on air encouraging the president to dig in his heels and escalate.

Methodology...

-=-=

-=-=

an 6 22

no lnx twt

MAGA extremists are freaking out over Trump’s endorsement in Alabama Senate race

[Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama speaking at the 2021 Southern Regional Conference, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Sheraton Panama City Beach Golf & Spa Resort in Panama City Beach, Florida, Gage Skidmore

Alex Henderson June 13, 2022

On Friday, June 10, former President Donald Trump endorsed Katie Britt over Rep. Mo Brooks in Alabama’s GOP U.S. Senate primary — exalting her as a “fearless America First warrior.” Trump was once an ally of Brooks; now, he is slamming the Alabama congressman as “woke.” But some MAGA Republicans disagree strongly with Trump’s endorsement of Britt, including former Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson and Fox News host Mark Levin.

On Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, Levin angrily wrote, “This is a gut punch. Very disappointing. Britt is a McConnell-supported RINO praised by the head of the Alabama Democrat Party. I hope Mo can pull it off. Lord knows, we need his conservative voice and vote in the Senate.”

On Twitter, Pierson linked to a March 8 article in Breitbart that accuses Britt of surrounding herself with Never Trump conservatives. Pierson wrote, “This Katie Britt?”

Britt has been the frontrunner in the primary, which has gone to a runoff. Candidate Mike Durant was in third place in the initial primary election, but Britt and Brooks were close enough in the vote count for them to go to a runoff that will be held on June 21.

In his endorsement of Britt, Trump argued, “The opposition says Katie is close to Mitch McConnell, but actually, she is not — in fact, she believes that McConnell put Mike Durant in the race to stop her, which is very possibly true.”

Writer Ryan Girdusky is another MAGA Republican who is angry that Trump endorsed Britt. On June 10, Girdusky tweeted, “Oh fuck off. Mo is the one.”

[grfx]

The Daily Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo, in an article published on June 12, observes, “The endorsement of Britt comes at a critical time for both campaigns. The primary runoff is in less than two weeks after neither candidate could secure 50% of the vote in the primary race. In April 2021, Trump endorsed Brooks, only to revoke the endorsement after Brooks urged Trump supporters to move on from claims that the 2020 election was ‘stolen.’”

Brooks is pointing out how much flip-flopping Trump has done in Alabama’s Republican U.S. Senate primary.

Petrizzo quotes Brooks as saying, “This is weird: last time Donald Trump talked about Katie Britt, he said she was unqualified for the Senate. Donald Trump is the only man in American politics who could get conned by Mitch McConnell twice in an Alabama Senate race.”

==

mma 6 22

mARK LEVIN (HOST): Peter Navarro is the former trade advisor to President Trump. The January 6 committee subpoenaed a wide swath of information they demanded from him, as well as his testimony.

As you know, it's been my contention that that committee is basically a front for the Justice Department's criminal investigation, which makes its activities utterly and completely unconstitutional. Not because of reasons other people have been saying, but because of separation of powers. And when you're using a committee as a Trojan horse to stalk individuals or to try and find individuals, and throw a very wide net, hundreds and hundreds of interviews and so forth, and your purpose is really to provide that information to a federal grand jury or a US attorney or the criminal division of the Justice Department, you are effectively violating the constitutional rights of individuals through the back door. And of course, the media play along.

Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon, Dan Scavino, and now Peter Navarro all held in contempt of Congress. Two of whom have been indicted, Bannon and Navarro. Now, here's the deal. Today, they picked up Navarro at an airport and they put him in handcuffs and leg irons. Handcuffs and leg irons, because they said he was an escape threat. The man is seventy two years old, he's known all over the place, he's no escape threat. All they had to do is ask him to show up. Just to show up.

new 5 22

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/john-eastmans-latest-legal-filing-reveals-dual-role-fox-news-hosts-service

Politico reported Friday that John Eastman, the disgraced ex-law professor who formulated many of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, was also apparently in communication with Fox News host Mark Levin.The story gets even more interesting from there, revealing the shell game that right-wing media personalities engage in while doubling as political operatives.

A legal filing by Eastman’s attorneys reveals that, among the messages Eastman is still attempting to conceal from the House January 6 committee are 12 pieces of correspondence with an individual matching Levin’s description as “a radio talk show host, is also an attorney, former long-time President (and current board Chairman) of a public interest law firm, and also a former fellow at The Claremont Institute.” Other details, including a sloppy attempt to redact an email address, also connect to Levin, who did not respond to Politico’s requests for comment.

Eastman’s contention, however, is that he was not communicating with Mark Levin the media personality, which would forfeit attorney-client privilege on those communications. Instead, he was speaking with Mark Levin the attorney, and formulating legal strategies regarding the election.

A quick law lesson: The “dual role”

In their legal filing, Eastman’s attorneys argue that he should not have to turn over certain communications with right-wing media figures, even as other communications with those same people have been submitted. This question turns on a body of case law involving lawyers who serve in a “dual role.”

This area of law normally involves people who both are attorneys and have personal business interests, in which case a court must determine in which capacity they were acting and whether those communications or actions in question retain the legal privileges of secrecy.

The brief acknowledges that Eastman could find no previous instance in law having to do with media figures who were also attorneys, but it argues to extend this doctrine accordingly.

“Many members of the modern ‘media’ have multiple roles,” the filing argues, contending that some of Eastman’s communications with Levin in fact “involved work product communications with attorneys who also wear media ‘hats.’”

Eastman’s legal and media “hats” collide

In the case of Eastman, however, his work as an attorney in conservative causes and his public media presence have been so closely intertwined as to demonstrate that any such ethical separations quite simply do not exist in the right-wing media and political ecosystem.

Most notably, Eastman first came to Trump’s attention via an appearance on Levin’s Fox show back in May 2019, in which Eastman argued that Trump had the power as president to fire people who were investigating him. “The notion that the president can’t determine the course of an investigation is the most basic violation of separation of powers,” Eastman argued — even including an investigation involving the president himself.

The New York Times reported last year that Trump had never met Eastman before watching this episode. “Within two months, Mr. Eastman was sitting in the Oval Office for an hourlong meeting,” the Times reported.

In addition, Eastman’s new filing notes that he has had different sets of communications with an “opinion editor at Newsweek,” who is also affiliated with different conservative legal organizations. That description matches Newsweek editor Josh Hammer, who published Eastman’s disastrous op-ed in 2020 asserting that then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris was not a U.S. citizen and thus ineligible to run for office, even though she was in fact born in California. In this instance, clearly, the Venn diagram of the conservative legal and media worlds was simply a perfect circle.

And while Eastman was advising Trump on his theories of reversing the election results, he also advanced those ideas on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s show.

Levin uses his media platform to push far-right legal theories

While apparently acting under the privileges of an attorney corresponding with Eastman on their efforts to overturn the election, Levin also used his media platform with Fox News to publicly advocate for the same pseudo-legalistic theories. For example, he and Fox News contributor Ken Starr advocated the weekend after the election for state legislatures to overturn their election results and instead appoint pro-Trump slates to the Electoral College.

During an appearance on the December 10, 2020, edition of Hannity, Levin also advocated for the bizarre lawsuit in which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election results in four swing states. [vid]

then on January 3, 2021, Levin said on his Fox show that it was Congress’ job to choose who won the presidential election — and he claimed members of Congress would be “shredding the Constitution” if they didn’t reject Biden’s victory.

In the nearly year and a half since the January 6 insurrection, Levin has used his radio show to chastise Congress for investigating the insurrection, spread conspiracy theories about the FBI having “instigated” the riot, defend Eastman’s idea that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to reject the election results, and compare riot defendants to "people in the civil rights movement."

Just this past Wednesday, Levin said on his radio show that people should not cooperate with the January 6 committee, “certainly not under these circumstances,” and he further called the entire inquiry a violation of the Constitution. So, are these pronouncements purely an aspect of his role as a media commentator, or do they also connect to the “hat” he wears as an attorney? [[aud]

the dirty secret of right-wing media: They’re all in the “dual role”

In an odd way, however, Eastman’s legal team has delivered a sort of public service through this “dual role” argument, in that it puts all the rest of Fox News and other right-wing media figures, such as Josh Hammer, into their proper perspective. Essentially, all of these conservative media personalities wear different “hats” in both their media jobs and as political operatives — and they will swap labels for whichever one serves them most conveniently in any particular moment.

The examples abound. Most notoriously, there is Sean Hannity’s true role as a Republican operative and Trump’s “shadow” chief of staff, while leveraging his media presence to assist his favored political candidates. Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo scripted her TV interview with Trump to aid his effort to overturn the election results, and recently used her show to spread a COVID-19 conspiracy theoryshe apparently picked up from a Republican Senate candidate. And of course, numerous Fox News personalities have a long-running track record of appearing at Republican campaign rallies and fundraisers.

The proper response to this shell game is to simply stop humoring it. Instead of allowing Fox and other right-wing media figures to decide on a moment-to-moment basis whether they are journalists or political operatives, they should be recognized as political operatives at all times, and called out for the manner in which they use media trappings for a partisan front operation.

===

wtf?

https://www.mediamatters.org/mark-levin/fox-news-host-mark-levin-says-att-doesnt-want-people-part-white-dominant-culture

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-trump-feedback-loop-generated-eastmans-presidential-coup-memo

no lnx vids

John Eastman’s coup memo was the result of the Fox-Trump feedback loop

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 10/04/21 1:59 PM EDT

The prominent conservative lawyer behind a memo explaining how to subvert the 2020 election for President Donald Trump reportedly first caught Trump’s attention while shilling on the president’s behalf during an interview on Fox News.

Trump’s obsession with Fox programming is well-documented. Throughout his presidency, he regularly tweeted in response to shows he was watching; staffed his administration and legal defense teams with Fox regulars; and shaped his decision-making around advice he received from its personalities, both in person and on the air. On issues as diverse as border wall contracting, pandemic response, and pardons, federal policy responded to what the president was seeing on the right-wing propaganda network.

John Eastman, a Claremont Institute senior fellow who spoke to the pro-Trump mob in the hours before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, apparently put himself on Trump’s radar in similar fashion.

“Trump, who had never met Mr. Eastman, saw him on the Fox News talk show of the far-right commentator Mark Levin railing against the Russia investigation” in mid-2019, The New York Times reported Saturday. “Within two months, Mr. Eastman was sitting in the Oval Office for an hourlong meeting.”

Eastman remained in Trump’s orbit over the next year and a half, according to the Times, and, after Trump lost the 2020 election, the right-wing attorney created a plan by which Vice President Mike Pence and congressional Republicans could use bogus claims of voter fraud to keep Trump in power. Eastman’s six-step scheme to end American democracy, revealed last month by The Washington Post and CNN, was foiled largely because Pence was ultimately unwilling to go through with it.

“Mr. Eastman’s appeal to Mr. Trump,” the Times reported, “rested in large part on his expansive views of presidential power — and his willingness to tell Mr. Trump what he wanted to hear.”

That description matches Eastman’s performance during the Fox interview that initially captured Trump’s attention. That appearance, for the May 12, 2019, edition of Life, Liberty, and Levin, followed the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump and his supporters tried to spin that document as vindicating him. But it was actually incredibly damning, documenting, among other things, a variety of ways Trump had sought to obstruct the probe.

Over the course of his hour-long sitdown withLevin, who introduced him as a “brilliant” legal scholar, Eastman explained how the Constitution and federal law supported all of Trump’s most corrupt and bigoted impulses, while decrying Mueller’s team as biased political partisans whose probe was itself illegal and perhaps deliberately “set up to create a media frenzy.”

According to Eastman, it is impossible for a president to violate the law by interfering with a federal investigation, even if that investigation’s purpose was to review his activities or those of his associates. “The notion that the president can’t determine the course of an investigation is the most basic violation of separation of powers,” he claimed. Even if Trump had successfully fired Mueller himself it would be legal, according to Eastman, because “the entire executive branch is headed by one guy and the only constitutional check on that is through an impeachment power, not through statutes and not through regulations internal to the Department of Justice, because the president has the authority to change those whenever he wants.”

After Levin described one such incident mentioned in the report, when Trump allegedly ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, Eastman said that “directing McGahn to fire him is no different than him picking up the phone himself, and even that would not have been obstruction.”

Video file

Citation From the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman went on to agree with Levin’s claim that the Mueller investigation was itself “fundamentally illegal” because “nobody in the administration itself [was] accused with any evidence of a crime,” which is required under the special counsel statute. In reality, Trump’s 2016 campaign chair and his first White House national security adviser were among the litany of presidential associates who were ultimately convicted or entered guilty pleas through the probe.

When Levin asked later in the program, “This is really a rejection by the Democrat Party and the media and the rest of them, a rejection of the 2016 election, isn't it?” Eastman replied, “I think so. They still can't believe that they lost that election and they're trying to rationalize that there must've been something nefarious in order to produce it.”

He went on to say that “this is really a challenge to the results of the last election, which means it is a challenge to the American people and the very notion that we govern ourselves,” and that the intent is to create a “tyranny of the majority.”

Video file

Citation From the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman also expressed support for Trump on a variety of other legal issues. He rejected the notion that payments foreign countries make to Trump through his hotel are violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and decried federal judges who blocked versions of Trump’s Muslim travel ban as “part of a resistance movement to undo the results of the 2016 election.”

At the conclusion of the interview, Eastman said that nothing Trump has done rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for impeachment under the Constitution.

“I've been stunned at how scrupulous Trump and his team have been in staying within the legal lines that they had,” he said, contrasting to how President Barack Obama “blew through the lines on executive power and constitutional authority on numerous occasions."

Video file

Citation From the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Eastman was able to turn an interview on a Sunday night Fox show into a position of real political power because the president himself had been glued to the set. And after Trump and his propagandists at Fox created a web of lies about a “rigged” election, he was there to concoct a legal pretext to keep Trump in office. The coup plot failed -- but it did result in deadly violence when a crowd incited by speeches from Trump, Eastman, and others stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in hopes of preventing the peaceful transition of power.

Since then, the situation has only grown more dire, as the Republican Party and right-wing disinformation apparatus have institutionalized Trump’s lie that the election was stolen, laying the groundwork to rig future elections in favor of the GOP, through Eastman’s strategy or another one. And Fox was at the root of it all.

Related

Trump lawyer John Eastman touted his plan to overturn the 2020 election in interviews with right-wing media

09/21/21 1:25 PM EDT

Broadcast news shows ignore Trump coup memo

09/22/21 4:32 PM EDT

CNN’s Brian Stelter highlights failure of news broadcasts to cover the Trump coup memo

09/26/21 2:44 PM EDT

https://www.mediamatters.org/mark-levin/fox-host-democrats-climate-plan-impossible-unless-we-all-commit-suicide-i-mean-we

10/30 mma

MARK LEVIN (HOST): They're going to shut down assembly lines. They're going to shut down American corporations. They're going to use 100 percent no carbon dioxide. Zero carbon dioxide, which is impossible unless we all commit suicide. I mean, we breathe out carbon dioxide.

trump dumps covid bill, ~  25th aMeND

https://www.mediamatters.org/mark-levin/foxs-mark-levin-nancy-pelosi-mentally-ill-she-has-shakes-her-face-old-age-malformed

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-right-wing-plan-to-steal-the-election-is-right-in-front-of-our-noses/

no lnx

The right-wing plan to steal the election is right in front of our noses

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon September 17, 2020

There has been a ton of news about Bill Barr — official title, “Attorney General of the United States;” actual job, Donald Trump’s capo — crawling across cable news chyrons in recent days, so much so that it’s hard to keep track of it all. There’s that thing he said about quarantine restrictions being nearly as bad as slavery. And the thing where he whined about the Justice Department staffers that’s more interested in enforcing the law than protecting Trump’s political power. And where he compared such people to preschool children, for having the temerity to question his decisions.

All that is bad, but probably the worst news this week is a report from the New York Times that “Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition.”

He also asked federal prosecutors “to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer.”

This is especially alarming in light of Barr’s assertion, in the same speech where he made offensive comments about his own staff and about slavery, that he believes he has “virtually unchecked discretion” in determining what cases to prosecute.

Barr was talking about cases stemming from the protests in various cities over the summer. Although the vast majority of those protests were peaceful, there were a few incidents of violence and looting, though absolutely no evidence of plots to overthrow the U.S. government (which is what “sedition” means). Barr’s eagerness to overreact, however, is another alarming sign that he is exploring ways to assist Trump’s public and obvious plans to do whatever he can to steal the presidential election.

Thursday morning, in the midst of one of his lengthy morning Twitter tantrums, Trump hinted yet again at his plans to use phony claims about “fraud” as cover to keep election officials from counting all the ballots after Election Day:

[twt pix]

It’s a muddled mess of a tweet, but basically, he’s using scare quotes to suggest that votes by mail, at least by Democrats, are illegitimate. He’s also, in his usual manner, accusing his opponents of doing what he’s clearly planning to do, which in this case is to keep the ballots from being accurately tallied.

This is where Barr’s dark talk of “sedition” comes in. Should the votes in swing states be close — and every indication from polling is they will be — Trump will likely try to declare victory on the night of the election. After that, there will be a massive battle, as happened under similar circumstances in 2000, over how and whether to count all those mail-in ballots. Much of that will be in the courts, but there will be a street component, as well, as pro-democracy protesters will hit the streets to demand a full vote count, and election officials could face efforts to physically stop them from counting votes.

It’s increasingly clear that putting down those anticipated protesters and stopping the vote count is a priority for Trump and his allies. So there’s increasing talk from prominent Trump allies of a possible “insurrection” by the left after Election Day, and the need to use maximum force to put it down.

Michael Caputo, a 2016 Trump campaign aide and bug-eyed right-wing conspiracy theorist who was given the job of assistant secretary for public affairs at Health and Human Services, recently made news for a truly wacky set of utterances during a recent Facebook Live event. Among other things, Caputo accused government scientists of, yep, “sedition” and accused the left of plotting an insurrection, recommending that right-wingers “buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

A wave of bad press compelled Caputo to take a leave of absence from his government job, citing vague medical concerns, but what he said directly echoes the rhetoric of Roger Stone, his longtime friend and fellow Trump confidant. Stone recently saw his sentence for felonies related to his role in the Russian conspiracy to undermine the 2016 election commuted by Trump, and has been at the forefront of trying to characterize efforts to count all the votes as an “insurrection” to be suppressed with violence.

During a segment on Infowars last week, Stone suggested that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act or declare martial law and that early voting and mail-in ballots in Nevada “should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state” to keep them from being counted. Stone claimed such ballots were fraudulent, but of course the real concern is that they’re legitimate — and that far too many of them will be cast for Joe Biden.

On Tuesday, Mark Levin — who is currently a radio TV host, but formerly worked with Barr at the Justice Department during the Reagan/Bush years — warned that the protests from the summer will “multiply by five or 10” and that Trump should declare them insurrections because they “need to be put down.”

:{

}:

Levin was being vague about what he thinks might provoke such enormous protests, but it’s not hard to see what upcoming event might do such a thing: A close election that Trump will try to steal by suppressing vote-counting.

And let’s be clear that Barr himself is on board with this idea that mail-in ballots are inherently illegitimate and that fighting to keep them from being counted is therefore justified. Barr has repeatedly floated baseless claims that mail-in ballots are fraudulent or that foreign countries “could easily make counterfeit ballots.”

None of this, it cannot be stated strongly enough, is true. It’s a shameless pretext for what is likely an upcoming fight to get those ballots thrown out.

It’s tempting to see all this talk of “insurrection” and “sedition” from the right — including Trump’s own government officials — as nothing more than hyperbole from Republicans who are emotionally overwrought in the face of what looks to be a lost election. Unfortunately, as the scandal around slowdowns at the U.S. Postal Service and lawsuits over mail-in voting make clear, the Trump administration is doing more than talk. It’s actively pulling whatever levers it can to keep Democratic votes from being counted this November.

Once those ballots have been cast, the fight to make sure they’re counted is going to get rough — not just in the courts, but in the streets. Much could depend on the ability of the left to hit the streets, not just in protests to put pressure on election officials to finish the vote count, but possibly to physically protect officials who are counting votes from armed right-wingers whom Trump has whipped into a frenzy. All this chatter about “insurrection,” “riots” and “sedition” is an effort to preemptively characterize pro-democracy protesters as a threat, and to justify using violence to suppress them.

Remember, Trump was willing to use tear gas and baton assaults against peaceful protesters just to keep them from heckling him. There’s no telling how far he’ll go to keep those same peaceful protesters from messing with his efforts to steal an election.

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-host-mark-levin-pushes-fringe-climate-denial-unhinged-rant-biden-sanders-unity

:{

}:

MARK LEVIN (FOX NEWS HOST): Do you know what this is? It's akin to The Communist Manifesto. This is the Bernie Sanders-Biden manifesto. They put this out. Nobody is discussing it. No newsroom has actually read it. It's not discussed at the Democratic convention. And by the way, liberty is not discussed. Electricians aren’t discussed, plumbers aren’t discussed --it's just a big hate fest.But I want to go through this very briefly, because that’s all the time I have anyway, I want people to know what is in thisdocument. It's 110 pages long, how they’re going to destroy your country. They want to retrofit millions of American homes and buildings to prevent carbon dioxide emissions and use. What’s carbon dioxide? Well if you’re in third grade and you’re taking a science class, it’s what you exhale and then plants use it to create oxygen. That’s third grade stuff. 

…

Retool assembly lines for zero emissions vehicles. Bye, Detroit. All 500,000 school buses in America transitioned to zero emissions vehicles within years. Massive expansion of public transportation. Massive regulation of fossil fuels leading to blackouts and brownouts you can see in California right now. In other words, they want to end natural gas, coal, and oil.

…

Climate. “National goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions from all new buildings by 2030” -- by the way, do you know what greenhouse gas emissions are? You ever drive by the road and you see a greenhouse in the winter and flowers are growing and tomatoes are growing? It's called the atmosphere!-- “In an attempt to create a 100% clean building sector.” You can see how they’re going to demolish our economy, destroy our smokestack industries. “Commit to eliminating carbon pollution” -- carbon dioxide is not pollution. We don’t get oxygen but from giving carbon dioxide to plants-- ”from power plants by 2035, through new technologies and neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency.” They want to install 500 million solar panels, 60,000 made-in-America wind turbines. You’ll never get any sleep. “Commit that all jobs in the clean energy economy will be unionized. Pursue environmental and climate justice.” I have no idea what any of that means

==

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/mark-levin-likens-teachers-unions-want-covid-19-protections-schools-segregationists-orval

trump threatened pull fed $ from schools if not reopen

==

amazon also bot shapiro bk

==

michaels complains about youtube de-platform

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_%26_Levin

ife, Liberty & Levin is an American political talk show hosted by conservative media personality Mark Levin and broadcast by Fox News. It premiered on February 25, 2018.^[1][2] Each week features an interview with a different guest for the full hour. In November 2017, Fox News announced that it had signed Levin for a weekend talk show to air on Sunday nights, beginning in February of 2018. The program explores "the fundamental values and principles undergirding American society, culture, politics, and current events, and their relevance to the nation's future and everyday lives of citizens."

Although most episodes have guests in-studio, Levin conducted interviews via video chat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Levin resumed in-person interviews on August 2, 2020, when he hosted Sean Hannity.

no lnx an 320

Here’s why Trump slammed Fox News for being too ‘politically correct’

Fox News

Written by Matthew Rozsa / Salon March 6, 2020

President Donald Trump blasted Fox News while appearing on the right-leaning network, telling its highest-rated host Sean Hannity that the cable channel invites “inappropriate” guests who criticize him in a desire to be “politically correct.”

:{

}:

“They put people on I think are inappropriate and say very, very false things, and people don’t challenge them. I think they’re trying to be very politically correct or ‘fair and balanced,’ right, is the term,” Trump told Hannity during a phone interview.

:{

}:

After Hannity agreed with Trump’s opinion, the president added: “I think they hurt themselves, if you want to know the truth.”

Earlier in the interview, Trump complained to Hannity that “the media is all on [the Democrats] side” with the exception of “yourself” and other Fox personalities, including Fox News host Mark Levin and Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. Trump also mentioned Rush Limbaugh, a radio host who the president incorrectly identified as working for the Fox networks.

Trump has a history of attacking Fox News after the network invites guests who are critical of the president or releases unfavorable poll numbers about him. During a rally in Colorado last month, Trump criticized Fox News and Fox Business Network host Neil Cavuto, saying “they had this woman on Neil Cavuto who doesn’t treat us good” and that Cavuto himself is “not too good.”

That comment referred to A. B. Stoddard, a RealClearPolitics associate editor who claimed that Trump performed poorly during the presidential debates in the 2016 cycle. Trump incorrectly claimed in a tweet that he “won every one of my debates,” even though respondents in post-debate polls picked Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as the winner of those contests.

The president also attacked Fox News in November for releasing a poll, which found that nearly half of Americans wanted him impeached and removed from office.

“You’re reading the wrong polls. I have the real polls,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “I have the real polls. The CNN polls are fake. The Fox polls have always been lousy. I tell them they ought to get themselves a real pollster. But the real polls — if you look at the polls that came out this morning — people don’t want anything to do with impeachment. It’s a phony scam. It’s a hoax.”

A spokesperson from Fox News pointed Salon to an earlier statement by the network saying “our polling unit has long been held in high regard for being a nonpartisan source of research.”

Trump criticized Fox personalities Andrew Napolitano, Shepard Smith (who left in October) and others one month earlier after Fox News released a poll showing an increase in support for his impeachment and removal from office.

“From the day I announced I was running for President, I have NEVER had a good @FoxNews Poll. Whoever their Pollster is, they suck. But @FoxNews is also much different than it used to be in the good old days,” Trump tweeted at the time.

The president then launched a series of personal attacks at Fox News personalities whose opinions he views as unfavorable, including Judge Andrew Napolitano.

“With people like Andrew Napolitano, who wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice & I turned him down (he’s been terrible ever since), Shep Smith, @donnabrazile (who gave Crooked Hillary the debate questions & got fired from @CNN), & others, @FoxNews doesn’t deliver for US anymore,” Trump added. “It is so different than it used to be. Oh well, I’m President!”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier,responding to a presidential attack in 2019 after the network released an unfavorable poll about Trump’s chances in the 2020 election, said that “we have a news side and an opinion side. The opinion folks express their opinions. We do polls. Our latest poll had the Democratic candidates head-to-head, several of them ahead of President Trump. And this poll tracks exactly what the Real Clear Politics average of polls — even a little the other way — and this poll matches what we are seeing out there.”

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Humeexpressed similar thoughts earlier that year when Trump attacked the network for hosting a town hall event with former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who at that time was running for president.

“Say this for Buttigieg. He’s willing to be questioned by Chris Wallace, something you’ve barely done since you’ve been president,” Hume wrote on Twitter.

He added, “Oh, and covering candidates of both parties is part of the job of a news channel.”

You can watch the full interview below via YouTube:

===

==

mma

The cycle of Fox News coverage and President Donald Trump’s id repeated itself this weekend, this time involving the network’s coverage of the now-infamous blowup between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly.

Kelly interviewed Pompeo on Friday. She asked him about Ukraine and impeachment, and he responded that he was only on to talk about Iran. After the interview, Kelly reported that Pompeo challenged her to find Ukraine on a map of the world without country labels on it. She also contends that Pompeo used profanity throughout their exchange.

After Kelly reported that, Pompeo responded with an official statement on Saturday, calling her a liar and suggesting that she confused Ukraine with Bangladesh. As many pointed out, this is ridiculous: Kelly has a masters degree in European studies from Cambridge and would not have said that Ukraine is in southeast Asia.

But Fox News took Pompeo's insult credulously, writing it up and leading its website. Fox host Mark Levin tweeted a link to the story, suggesting that NPR should no longer exist. Trump immediately agreed.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/heres-how-trump-weaponizes-crackpot-ideas-to-maintain-a-firm-grip-on-his-maga-base

no lnx

Here’s how Trump weaponizes crackpot ideas to maintain a firm grip on his MAGA base

Written by Alex Henderson January 10, 2020

If President Donald Trump is reelected in November, it won’t be because the majority of Americans share his views, but because of his ability to fire up his MAGA base, whip them into a frenzy, address their grievances and get them to the polls in large numbers. Trump, journalist Michael Kruse explains in a Politico article headlined “Trump’s Art of the Seal,” knows and understands his audience — and one of the things that has kept that audience excited is his ability to take fringe ideas, get them discussed in mainstream venues and weaponize them.

Trump has inspired widespread discussion of crackpot conspiracy theories ranging from birtherism (the racist claim that President Barack Obama was really born in Kenya instead of the U.S.) to the CrowdStrike theory — a belief that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. It was Trump’s pursuit of the CrowdStrike theory, Kruse explains, that led to him being impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.

During President Barack Obama’s first term, Kruse explains, Trump’s “proto-political operation was essentially a two-man team” consisting of veteran GOP operativeRoger Stone and his protégé Sam Nunberg.

“One of Nunberg’s self-appointed tasks was to help Trump understand what the masses on the right really wanted, and one way he did that was by listening to Mark Levin’s increasingly popular radio show,” Kruse recalls. “The people who were tuning in most intently to Levin, Nunberg thought, were the people most likely to vote for Trump if he launched an actual bid.”

Nunberg, according to Kruse, helped Trump realize that the far-right Tea Party movement was as angry at the GOP establishment as it was at Democrats.

“The Tea Party, in the estimation of Levin and his listeners, didn’t start as a reaction to the liberal outrages of President Barack Obama — it started as a reaction to what they viewed as the inconsistently hardline conservative policies of President George W. Bush,” Kruse observes. “Amnesty for immigrants, for instance? An absolute no-go.”

As Trump’s movement grew, Kruse notes, it didn’t do so by appealing to conservative intellectuals.

“For the better part of the past half-century, Trump, 73, has extracted from an array of similar sources — from the New York Post’s dishy Page Six to the toxicity of Twitter to far-right websites and lowbrow TV — a knack for knowing what people want. Not all people, but many people.”

Poll after poll has demonstrated that Trump is unpopular with the majority of Americans. But among his hardcore MAGA base, he is still quite popular. And Kruse wraps up his Politico article by describing the stranglehold Trump maintains on the Republican Party in 2020.

“If Trump began his political ascent as a follower —  cannily co-opting ideas that resonated with a certain segment of the electorate — in doing so, he clearly has proceeded to forge a following of his own,” Kruse explains. “He has become a leader of those who are willing to be led in this way, solidifying lockstep support from the agenda-setting base of his party as well as its kingpins and figureheads, who parrot him the way he once did Levin.”

==

==

ref

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/01/10/donald-trump-art-of-the-steal-096841

POLITICO

no lnx many

Trump’s Art of the Steal

How Donald Trump rode to power by parroting other people’s fringe ideas, got himself impeached for it—and might prevail anyway.

By MICHAEL KRUSE

01/10/2020 05:09 AM EST

Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer for POLITICO.

Sometime soon, Donald Trump, the third president in the history of the United States to be impeached, is expected to face a trial in the Senate, charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Traced back to its roots, this is a crisis entirely of his own creation: He came across a sketchy scrap of information, a debunked piece of Russian propaganda relating to Ukraine, and he saw it as something he could use, to help himself and to hurt an opponent. He latched onto it, pumped it up, and passed it along.

Anyone wondering how the president could make this kind of mistake has missed something important about Trump’s rise. For as long as he has been in politics—in fact, for longer—he has been a ruthlessly effective practitioner of the art of parroting others’ most provocative, salacious ideas. “There are a lot of people that think …” “That’s what I heard …” “Some people even say …” His gossipy M.O. was a staple of his campaign, propelling his historic victory, but it also has driven the scandal that has consumed his presidency—“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike,” he said on the now well-known call last July with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

If what he was referencing sounded kind of like a dodgy talk radio rant, that’s not an accident. It’s a deliberate tactic, one that Trump was developing, and exploiting, from the moment he first seriously started to consider a run for the White House.

In the early to middle part of the previous decade, Trump’s proto-political operation was essentially a two-man team—there was Roger Stone, now a felon, and there was Stone’s protégé, Sam Nunberg. One of Nunberg’s self-appointed tasks was to help Trump understand what the masses on the right really wanted. And one way he did that was by listening to Mark Levin’s increasingly popular radio show. The people who were tuning in most intently to Levin, Nunberg thought, were the people most likely to vote for Trump if he launched an actual bid. “Donald Trump,” Nunberg told me, meaning his candidacy, meaning his victory, “would never have happened without Mark Levin.”

[Billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump, left, walks to the Federal Courthouse in Newark, N.J., with Roger Stone, the director of Trump's presidential exploratory committee Monday, Oct. 25, 1999, for the swearing-in of Trump's sister as a federal appeals court judge. In a prelude to his possible presidential bid, Trump quit the Republican Party Monday and joined New York's wing of the Reform Party setting the stage for a possible presidential nomination battle with Pat Buchanan.

Donald Trump, photographed in Oct. 1999, with Roger Stone, the director of his presidential exploratory committee, walking behind him. | AP Photo]

Nunberg’s frequent emails to Trump, sent via an assistant in Trump’s office and which have not been reported on before, were accounts of the many grievances that animated Levin and his listeners. Union members resented union leaders. Republican rank and file loathed Republican elites. The Tea Party, in the estimation of Levin and his listeners, didn’t start as a reaction to the liberal outrages of President Barack Obama—it started as a reaction to what they viewed as the inconsistently hard-line conservative policies of President George W. Bush. Amnesty for immigrants, for instance? An absolute no-go. Trump, Nunberg stressed when we talked, didn’t want to be told what to say, but Nunberg nonetheless made his pitch for him as an insurgent outsider: “This is all marketing and you’re a great product … in a new type of market,” he said he told Trump. “Help me help you sell gold to these people that normally buy gold.”

Trump started listening to the show.

“He would call me up sometimes,” Nunberg recalled. “‘Oh, did you just hear what Levin said?’”

For the better part of the past half-century, Trump, 73, has extracted from an array of similar sources—from the New York Post’s dishy Page Six to the toxicity of Twitter to far-right websites and lowbrow TV—a knack for knowing what people want. Not all people but many people. And not what they say they want, but what they really want. Ostentatious and aspirational glitz. Plain talk to the point of crude talk. Conflict.

Employees, executives, aides and others who’ve known Trump well say he’s not a book-reader so much as a room-reader, “sucking in information that he finds valuable,” grabbing “nuggets” that he thinks can help him get what he covets, which is some slurry of wealth, attention, respect and power. “A creature of feel,”the late strategist Pat Caddell described him to me in the summer of 2018, “a visceral stimulus creature”—who could repackage what he took in and sell it back to the hoi polloi.

In 2010, for example, he recognized a lightning-rod issue torquing emotions and jumped right in, gleaning buzz for himself with his offer to purchase the site of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”—which alerted him to the potential potency of anti-Obama birtherism, which paved the way for his anger-girded, fear-mongering presidential candidacy. Trump is in this way less a thinker and more a megaphone, an amplifier of the ideas of others, the value of those ideas in his mind based not on veracity so much as utility. Which is another way of saying he’s not so much a leader as he is a follower. Perhaps the ultimate follower. Trump is the Follower of the Free World.

[Top: People protest a mosque construction near Ground Zero during a New York City Landmarks Commission vote in 2010. Bottom: A copy of President Barack Obama's long form birth certificate sits on a reporter's lap in the White House Briefing Room on April 27, 2011, after the administration released the document following extended criticism by those who did not believe he was born in the United States.

Top: People protest a mosque construction near Ground Zero during a New York City Landmarks Commission vote in 2010. Bottom: A copy of President Barack Obama's long form birth certificate sits on a reporter's lap in the White House Briefing Room on April 27, 2011, after the administration released the document following extended criticism by those who did not believe he was born in the United States. | Getty Images]

“Donald was never a CEO. He was a brand manager—you know, how do I appeal to the masses?” former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told me recently. “It’s like Elmer Gantry. It’s the carnival barker. It’s what every pitchman has always done. Tell the people what they want to hear.”

“Taking the information he wants or needs,” former Trump casino exec Jack O’Donnell said.

“Whether it’s true or not,” former Trump Organization exec Barbara Res said.

Taking it in. Sending it out. Over and over. Again and again.

This, regardless of whatever else it is or means, is a remarkable and undeniable talent: hoovering others’ ideas, making them his, and in doing so growing a following uniquely his own that far exceeds the size of the even considerable original audience.  AMP It’s what got him elected. In some ways, too, it’s what got him impeached.

“There’s no question,” presidential historian Doug Brinkley told me last week. “He just trolls around and looks for weird stories that grab his attention, and he figures, ‘I know the American psyche, and this’ll grab their attention,’ and he throws it out there.”

But effective as cherrypicking and amplifying the most emotionally and politically useful tidbits has been for Trump throughout his life, it has proved an uneasy fit when practiced from the inside of an office that is supposed to represent the accumulated knowledge and official position of the entire U.S. government. In some sense, the entire impeachment process is a collision between Trump’s magnification of random, unverified rumors and an official regime of fact and process. The outcome will determine more than whether Trump is removed from office. It may well establish a new standard for what our government defines as true.

Speedy with job-site arithmetic but dismissive of academics, whom he considered weak and effete, Fred Trump Sr. of Queens, N.Y., bestowed upon his middle son and eventual heir not just extravagant riches but an anti-elitist, expertise-averse worldview. At New York Military Academy, at Fordham University in the Bronx and then the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, classmates have said, a young Donald Trump was a “disinterested,” skyscraper-doodling student, “loath to really study much,” game to “bluff his way through.”

But the fact that he wasn’t a scholar didn’t mean that he was stupid, according to people who worked with or watched him closely over the decades of his professional existence.

[Donald Trump (L), owner of the New Jersey Generals of the U.S. Football League, said his league’s $1.32 billion antitrust suit against the National Football League will crack “one of the great monopolies in the is country.” At right is his attorney Roy Cohn.

Donald Trump and his attorney Roy Cohn in October, 1984. | Getty Images]

“If he’s willing to listen, he’s a quick learner,” Res said.

“A quick study,” biographer Gwenda Blair concurred.

“Donald just absorbs, absorbs, absorbs,” former Trump Organization executive Louise Sunshine said. “He can extract so much information from his awareness of his surroundings and of the world around him.”

Starting in the 1970s, he learned, of course, how to fight dirty and win from his antagonistic attorney and mentor, Roy Cohn.

In the ’80s, he learned from Stone, and from watching George Steinbrenner, Ed Koch and Ronald Reagan, too. Steinbrenner, the bombastic owner of the New York Yankees, led as a loner. His secretary frequently could be heard saying, “Mr. Steinbrenner, Trump on line 2”. Koch won three terms as the mayor of New York in part “by playing the kibitzer,” wrote Martin Shefter, “the brash fellow who has an opinion on everything.” The formula for success, Koch thought, was relatively uncomplicated: Get attention to get votes. “And you can only do that,” he once said, “by being bigger than life. It’s theatrics.” Staging news conference after news conference, Koch packed the way he talked with superlatives, “best this” and “best that.” Reporters joked about having to join gyms just to keep up with him. But he seldom left them wanting for material. He called foes “wackos” and “kooks.” He called the city council “a gaggle of clowns.”

Reagan, meanwhile, won the Oval Office in one way not dissimilar to Koch’s path to Gracie Mansion—by winning over blue-collar, disaffected Democrats, who sought “safety” in the face of the changing, increasingly diverse society surrounding them. Reagan spent the decade blurring the lines between politics and entertainment, wondering at times how anybody could be an effective president without having been an actor first.

For Trump, the “visceral stimulus creature,” Steinbrenner, Koch and Reagan provided daily tutorials of sorts. And while his political affiliations were elastic and his overall ideology embryonic, Trump demonstrated early his acumen for tearing pages from proven playbooks and giving them his own signature twists—with blaring full-page newspaper ads in the late ’80s, criticizing American foreign policy and calling for the death penalty for (the innocent) Central Park Five. AA

[Top: At the June 1978 launching ceremony of the new New York Hyatt Hotel/Convention facility that will be built on the site of the former Commodore Hotel are, from left: Donald Trump, Mayor Ed Koch, Gov. Hugh Carey and Robert T. Dormer, executive vice president of the Urban Development Corp. Bottom right: President Reagan shakes hands with Donald Trump at a White House reception for members of the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies Foundation. Bottom left: New York Yankees manager Billy Martin, standing, meets developer Donald Trump at Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach in March 1988. Seated with Trump are his son Donald, 10, with a ball given to him by Martin, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

Top: At the June 1978 launching ceremony of the new New York Hyatt Hotel/Convention facility that will be built on the site of the former Commodore Hotel are, from left: Donald Trump, Mayor Ed Koch, Gov. Hugh Carey and Robert T. Dormer, executive vice president of the Urban Development Corp. Bottom right: President Reagan shakes hands with Donald Trump at a White House reception for members of the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies Foundation. Bottom left: New York Yankees manager Billy Martin, standing, meets developer Donald Trump at Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach in March 1988. Seated with Trump are his son Donald, 10, with a ball given to him by Martin, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. | AP/Ronald Reagan Presidential Library/Getty]

And in the ’90s, Trump learned from watching Ross Perot run for president (and lose) and Jesse Ventura run for governor of Minnesota (and win). “The nutty billionaire and the wrestler,” he called them, according to Stone. He watched Newt Gingrich weaponize words in the political arena in a new and virulent manner, labeling Democrats “traitors” and “sick,” urging his fellow Republicans to do the same. He watched the rise of partisanship on cable TV, MSNBC on the left, Fox News on the right, and the spiking clamor for conservative talk radio—from 240 all-talk stations in the country in 1987 to 900 in ’92 to 1,130 in ’95. Rush Limbaugh, the trailblazer, the precursor to somebody like Mark Levin, railed away about “feminazis” and “commie-libs”—and his listeners loved it. “He’s saying what I think,” they thought.

And Trump in 2011 seized on what people, some people—misguided, bigoted or both—thought about the country’s first black president. The birtherism campaign he began to wage was the distillation of his scattershot but resolute education as the kibitzer, the gossip hound, the insurgent outsider, the nascent politician, the feeder off the fever swamps. The follower.

“I’m starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country,” he said on Fox News in March of that year.

“He doesn’t have a birth certificate,” he told talkerLaura Ingraham two days later.“Somebody told me …”

“A lot of people do not thinkit was an authentic certificate,” he said on CNN in 2012, long after the White House released Obama’s “long form” birth certificate.

[Mark Levin speaks, with President Donald Trump behind him, during a ceremony to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Attorney General Edwin Meese, in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019, in Washington.

Mark Levin speaks during a ceremony at the White House in 2019. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo]

“Was it a birth certificate?You tell me,” he told ABC News in 2013. “Some people saythat was not his birth certificate.”

That same year, Nunberg arranged for Trump to make his Levin show debut, preparing a memo “to familiarize Mr. Trump with Mark Levin,” he wrote—deploying tried-and-true ways to pique Trump’s interest. Nunberg emphasized Levin’s ratings history (“In the first 18 months on the air, the program jumped to #1 in the time slot”), the company he kept (considersSean Hannity “his best friend”),his reach (books Liberty and Tyranny and Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America sold more than a million copies, Nunberg noted), and his compensation (“a reported annual salary of $12.5 million a year”). Nunberg mentioned, too, that what he said on the air often was disseminated on a variety of websites like TheRightScoop.com. People, in other words, “some people,” “many people,” “a lot of people,” were listening to what Levin was saying.

Armed with this advance work, the memo as well as the emails, Trump fit in well with Levin. In addition toshilling for the upcoming season of “The Celebrity Apprentice”—“Trace Adkins, La Toya Jackson, Dennis Rodman”—Trump delivered to Levin’s listeners what they wanted—which essentially was … Levin’s ideas, studiously collected by Nunberg, consumed by Trump and regurgitated back to the host.

“If the Republicans are going to win,” Trump said, “they’re going to have tobreak away from the Karl Roves of the world and, frankly, get more involved—you know, the Tea Party, these people are great. I’ve done some speeches in front of theTea Party.They are great Americans, they love this country, they work so hard, and they have been so mistreated by … the liberal media. … They truly are not treated with proper respect.”

And he landed especially hard on immigration and any notions of amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

“I watched last night,” he continued, referring to Obama’s State of the Union that year, “as Senator McCain and everybody were jumping up and down, you know, applauding—I never saw him move so fast, you know, nice guy, but he jumped up—and was applauding as soon as the immigration became a part of the discussion, a part of the speech.”

“Immigration,” Trump said, “will be the next thing, based on what I’m watching.”

Trump and Levin wrapped up by exchanging compliments.

“I’m extremely impressed with what you’re doing,” Levin said.

“You just have a great show,” Trump said. “I’m always listening.”

“Donald Trump,” Levin told his listeners after Trump signed off.“See that, folks? Very solid. Very conservative. To the right of the Republican establishment. Strong supporter of the Tea Party.I’m telling you. I’ve been watching this. I’ve been listening. People have been sending me his tweets.”

There was a reason for that. “He’s putting stuff out there,” Nunberg told me of Trump’s tweets at the time, some of which Nunberg was suggesting, “that sounds like Mark Levin.” FEEDBACK LITERALLY

In the few months before his interview with Levin:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Obama weak on immigration. All words, no action. He's been Prez 4 years.

197

6:12 PM - Oct 16, 2012

Twitter Ads info and privacy

987 people are talking about this

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Obama is laughing at Karl Rove & all the losers who spent hundreds of millions of dollars and didn’t win one race, including the big one!

63

1:05 PM - Dec 3, 2012

Twitter Ads info and privacy

349 people are talking about this

And in the few months after:

Donald J. Trump

?

@realDonaldTrump

Whether you like it or not, Bush also gave us Obama!

54

8:12 AM - Jun 27, 2013

Twitter Ads info and privacy

190 people are talking about this

This ear-to-the-proverbial-ground political ramp-up wasn’t limited to Levin and talk radio. It was around this time as well that Trump began to give more and more talks on the pre-presidential hustings, GOP chicken dinners in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.

He talked to Pat Caddell about what he was picking up on the trail.“He would put forth his position or his feelings, and he would judge the level of the response to it, and that helped him organize, I suppose to whatever degree it was organized, his views about issues,” Caddell told me in 2018. “Things he said that didn’t go over disappeared. Things that did stayed.”

Twitter, too, increasingly served a similar purpose.

“He glommed onto it like it was an oxygen source,” Caddell explained. “And he would tweet what he believed, and people would retweet or answer or whatever, and it was kind of his ongoing focus group.”

“He loved it,” Nunberg said. “He doesn’t trust the political people who do the focus groups.” Instead: “What are we getting the most retweets on?”

In 2014 and ’15—well before Trump came down the escalator and announced his intention to run—Nunberg sent Trump nearly daily updates of snippets of news and possible topics and wordings for tweets. At the tops of the documents he showed the number of Trump’s Twitter followers ticking up (a snapshot from December of 2014: 2,751,488 … 2,753,548 … 2,757,190 …) and the number of days left until the GOP primary debate at the Reagan library and the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries ticking down.

A month into the presidential campaign, after the Vietnam-avoiding Trump insulted McCain by saying he was “not a war hero” and that he liked people “who weren’t captured,” he refused to apologize. That, Nunberg said, partly was because of what he had internalized by listening to Levin. Nunberg told Trump it was going to help him. (It certainly didn’t hurt him.) “He said, ‘Why?’” Nunberg said. “And I said, ‘Because our people despise John McCain. They despise the fact that McCain hides behind his military record to shit on Republicans and you can’t criticize him on anything because of his military record. I said, ‘John McCain—he is hated almost as much as Barack Obama on talk radio.’ … I said, ‘He might as well be Barack Obama on talk radio.’”

Talk radio led the way. Trump followed.

Theoretically, Trump could have changed. As successful as this pattern of behavior had been in the years preceding his run and during the campaign itself—he was, after all, elected president—Trump could have adjusted once he took office, having at his disposal, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, the world’s preeminent intelligence-gathering apparatus. But no—sticking to “that gossip kind of mentality,” said O’Donnell, the casino exec, Trump has continued to mine Twitter, plucking what he wants, “very comfortable with half thoughts,” “always looking for tidbits of information that he can use to his advantage.”

“He sees the ones that are the most popular,” former Fox News anchor Eric Bolling, identified by Time as someone who speaks regularly to Trump, told the magazine in June of 2018, “and getting the most [of the] zeitgeist, most attention on social media.”

And then? The last and most important piece of this by now almost rote process?

“He repeats it,” Bolling said.

[BEDMINSTER TOWNSHIP, NJ - NOVEMBER 20: (L to R) President-elect Donald Trump and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani shake hands following their meeting at Trump International Golf Club, November 20, 2016 in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. Trump and his transition team are in the process of filling cabinet and other high level positions for the new administration.

President-elect Donald Trump and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani shake hands at Trump International Golf Club in New Jersey, days after the election in Nov. 2016. Giuliani would go on to become President Trump's personal attorney. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images]

And for as long as he’s occupied the Oval Office, Trump’s been thinking about Ukraine.“Ukraine,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said a couple months back, “has always been problematic, from Day One. He’s heard a lotabout Ukraine from a lot of people.” He’s heard about it, according to reports, from RudyGiuliani, from his favored right-wing media outlets, from Vladimir Putin.

He started spreading it almost immediately.AMP

“I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian,” he said of CrowdStrike, incorrectly, in an interview with The Associated Press in April of 2017. “That’s what I heard.”

Officials have insisted to the president the CrowdStrike conspiracy is just that. He has not heeded their counsel.

It’s what led to the call with Ukraine’s Zelensky that led to the series of events that led to his impeachment. “The server,” Trump said, “they say Ukraine has it.”

“It’s combustible because Trump’s only looking for news stories and information that suits his persona, that build his persona up,”Brinkley, the presidential historian, told me last week. “And by doing that he is following the trolls down an ugly path.”

There are those who predict Trump’s tendencies will ultimately undo him. Thomas Bossert, who was Trump’s first homeland security adviser, logged a warning on a Sunday morning last fall. “If he continues to focus on that white whale,” Bossert said of Trump’s questionable Ukraine theory, “it’s going to bring him down.”

But it is hard to see that happening now. It’s virtually assured that Trump’s impeachment will end not with his ouster but with an acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate. This purported ordeal could even be a boost. In fundraising, and in some polling, it already has been. And come November, he absolutely could win again. And if that happens,Trump in some sense would possess more power than any president ever—subjected to the gravest constitutional check, then given by voters another four years.

If Trump began his political ascent as a follower, cannily co-opting ideas that resonated with a certain segment of the electorate, in doing so he clearly has proceeded to forge a following of his own. He has become a leader of those who are willing to be led in this way—solidifying lockstep support from the agenda-setting base of his party as well as its kingpins and figureheads, who parrot him the way he once did Levin. The result: a crescendoing feedback loop, in which followers are leaders and leaders are followers, perpetuating ideas based on what works rather than what’s real.

“One of the sacred principles in U.S. history has been that presidents are supposed to tell the public the truth,” Brinkley said. “So this is a new kind of Republican that refuses to ever admit culpability or a mistake and is willing to destroy not just institutions but fact-based thinking, empirical thinking.” Trump? “He doesn’t care whether it’s true or not true, whether it destroys somebody or not—there’s no morality into it. It’s just a strange, weird bit of information—‘and it helps me, and I’m going to propagate it.’”

John D. Heubusch is an Executive Director for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library with 21 videos in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a 2009 Speech. The year with the most videos was 2011 with five videos. The year with the highest average number of views per program was 2019 with an average of 3,188 views per program. Most appearances with Craig Shirley (2), Mark R. Levin(2), Frederick J. Ryan (2). Most common tags: Reagan, Ronald, Conservatives, Immigration.

:{

}:

gushing into for levin (6th official appearNCE)

:{

}:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?460745-1/unfreedom-press

JUNE 8, 2019

Unfreedom of the Press

TV and radio host Mark Levin talked about his book, Unfreedom of the Press, in which he argued that the press has lowered its standards in providing objective and trustworthy journalism.

John D. Heubusch

APPLAUSE] >> GOOD EVENING, EVERYONE. FOR TOES WHO HAVE NOT HAD A CHANCE TO MEET I HAVE THE HONOR OF BEING AT THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION, AS ALWAYS HERE AT THE -- [APPLAUSE] >> IF YOU WOULD IN HONOR OUR OUR MEN AND WOMEN IN UNIFORM WHO DEFEND OUR FREEDOM AROUND THE WORLD, PLEASE JOIN ME FOR THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. >> I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND TO THE REPUBLIC NOR ITS STANDS, ONE NATION, UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH ACCOMPLISH JUDD

-- WITH LIBERTY AND JUST FOR ALL. THANK YOU, PLEASE BE SEATED. >> BEFORE WE GET STARTED, THERE'S JUST A FEW PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE I WANT TO MAKE SURE I RECOGNIZE TONIGHT AND I WILL START WITH MARK'S WIFE, JULIE, AND HIS SON, CHASE. JULIE AND MARK? [APPLAUSE] >> THIS IS SPECIAL. MARK'S MOTHER-IN-LAWS SYLVIA STRAUSS. SILVER RA. [APPLAUSE] . >> AND IT WOULD NOT BE AN EVENT AT THE REAGAN LIE IF I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE ELTON AND HIS WIFE, JANICE. >> FIRST, BEFORE THE GREAT ONE TAKES THE STAGE, I WANT HIM TO KNOW HOW GRATEFUL ALL OF US ARE THAT HE ONCE AGAIN HAS TAKEN THREE DAYS OF OFF THIS INCREDIBLY BUSY LIFE TO LEAVE THE BUNKER AND TRAVEL ALL THE WAY TO CALIFORNIA AND BACK. [APPLAUSE] BY VISITING US, THE US I MEAN NOT ONLY THIS UNRULY CROWD THAT IS IN THIS PACKED HOUSE BEFORE ME BUT ALSO THE HUNDREDS OF THE DENALI FANS LIVE WATCHING THIS NEXT DOOR. WELCOME TO ALL OF YOU. [APPLAUSE]

>> NOW, MARK HAS BEEN HERE QUIETLY, A TIME OR TWO WITH HIS FAMILY OVER THE YEARS. BUT THIS IS HIS SIXTH OFFICIAL VISIT TO THE REAGAN LIBRARY. A TRADITION HE SO GENEROUSLY STARTED WAY BACK IN 2010 WHEN HE WAS HERE WITH HIS NUMBER ONE "NEW YORK TIMES" BEST SELLING BOOK, LIBERTY AND TYRANNY. DID MENTION THAT HIS NEWEST BOOK, UNFREEDOM OF THE APPRECIATION THE ONE EACH OF YOU ARE HOLDING THIS WEEK'S NUMBER ONE "NEW YORK TIMES" BEST SELLER. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]

>> IT HAS BEEN ONE OF THE GREATEST HONORS OF MY LIFE TO COUNT THIS MAN AS A FRIEND. I GENUINELY MEAN THAT. I BET THAT EACH ONE OF YOU FEELS THE SAME KIND OF KINSHIP WITH MARK AS WELL. LISTENING TO HIM ON THE RADIO EACH DAY OR WATCHING HIM ON TELEVISION OR GETTING THE CHANCE TO SHAKE HIS HAND, IT'S A BIG DEAL. AND COMFORTING TO KNOW HIS VOICE AND INTELLECT REACHES MILLIONS OF PEOPLE EACH DAY. GRATIFYING TO KNOW HIS POINT OF VIEW, OUR POINT OF VIEW, IS SO ELOQUENTLY EXPRESSED AMIDST ALL OF THE NOISE AND CHATTER WE'RE TREATED TO FROM TALKING HEADS AND THE MANY WHO PRETEND TO HAVE OUR NATION'S BEST INTERESTS IN MIND. [APPLAUSE] MARK HAS ACHIEVED SO MUCH SINCE HE WAS WITH US TWO YEARS AGO. LEVIN TV HAS GROWN BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS. ON TOP OF THAT HE NOW DOMINATES THE TV RATINGS ON TEXAS NEWS WITH HIS SHOW, LIFE, LIBERTY AND LEVIN. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]

>> RADIO SHOW ON THE AIR FOR 17 YEARS, NOW TRACKS OVER 7 MILLION LISTENERS EVERY DAY. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] HE IS NO WON WE ARE WE ALL TOOK SUCH GREAT PRIDE WHEN HE WAS RECENTLY INDUCTED INTO THE NATIONAL RADIO HALL OF FAME A FEW MONTHS AGO. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] >> SO, SOME -- SINCE WE WERE LAST TEAGUE WITH HIM. JUST LIKE YOU AND ME HE IS HUMAN, TOO. HE HAS FACED SOME SADNESS AND SOME CHALLENGES, TOO, THIS PAST YEAR. HE AND JULIE, WORST MARK'S DAD, JACK, AND MOM, NORM YAA IN A FEW MONTHS THERE IS A MODEST BENCH IN THIS ODDER -- ODDER TOUM THAT BEARS THEIR NAMES. .

>> IT OVERLOOKES THE BEAUTIFUL GREEN VALLEY BELOW THAT FACES THE PACIFIC. THE SAME VIEW SHARED BY PRESIDENT REAGAN'S OWN GRAVESITE. HE'S TAKEN ON A LOT OF WORK. IT'S SUPER HUMAN EFFORT TO PRODUCE AND PERFORM AS MUCH AS HE DOES AND AS WELL AS HE DOES EVERY DAY AND HE DOES IT FOR US. HIS LEVINNITES, FOR HIS COUNTRY. THAT HE LOVES SO MUCH. [APPLAUSE] MARK, I THINK IT'S NO SECRET WE HERE IN CALIFORNIA HAVE BEEN BUSY, TOO. WHILE YOU WERE WRITING YOU BEST-SELLING BOOKS AND PRODUCING BRAND NEW SHOWS, WE WERE BUSY IN THE GREAT STATE OF CALIFORNIA, THE SAME STATE THAT TWICE MADE RONALD REAGAN ITS GOVERNOR AND ITS 40th PRESIDENT, BECOMING NUMBER ONE IN SO MANY THINGS AS WELL. SINCE YOU WERE LAST WITH US, MARK, JUST THINK OF WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED WHILE YOU HAVE BEEN GONE. IN THAT TIME CALIFORNIA HAS RAISED ITS STATE INCOME TAX TO THE HIGHEST IN THE ANYWAY WE'RE NUMBER ONE. [BOOING]

>> HERE IN L.A. , OUR STATE SALES TAX AND LOCAL SALES TAX COMBINED ARE THE HIGHEST IN THE COUNTRY. [BOOING] >> SANCTUARY CITIES ACROSS THE GREAT LAND HAVE NOTHING ON US. [BOOING] >> WE HAVE A DISTINCTION OF BEING A SANCTUARY STATE. [BOOING] >> NO WONDER, THEN, THAT WE HARBOR MORE ILLEGAL ALIENS -- I'M SORRY -- UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS -- THAN ANY OTHER STATE IN AMERICA. [BOOING] >> SINCE YOU LAST VISITED, WE HAVE SUCCEEDED IN ATTRACTING THE LARGEST HOMELESS POPULATION OF ANY STATE IN THE NATION. WE HAVE THE HIGHEST GAS PRICES IN THE NATION AND NOT TO BE OUTDONE WE OWN THE LARGEST DEBT OF ANY STATE IN THE NATION. FINALLY WE HOLD THE RECORD OF FILING MORE LAWSUITS, 52, TO BE EXACT, AGAINST THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION THAN ANY OTHER STATE. [BOOING]

>> THAT'S RIGHT. I SAID IT, MARK. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] >> WE HAVE BEEN BUSY, TOO. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE JOIN ME IN GIVING A WARM WELCOME TO MR. MARK LEVIN. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] >> LET'S GO TO TEXAS. MARK, HOW ARE YOU HOLDING UP? YOUR LIKE -- YOU AND SEAN HANNITY THREE HOURS OR RADIO ARRANGES HOUR OF TV AND NOW AN HOUR ON FOX EACH SUNDAY. THE BUSIEST YOU HAVE EVER BEEN.

>> LET ME SAY THIS, THIS THOME, THE REAGAN LIBRARY. SERVED IN THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION. THIS IS HOME TO ME THREE DAYS IS NOT ENOUGH. [APPLAUSE] >> I LOVE ALL OF YOU. ALL OF YOU GREAT PATRIOTS OUT HERE IN CALIFORNIA. FIGHTING THE STATE, FIGHT THE LOCAL, FIGHT THE BAT FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. ONE AFTER ANOTHER SAID DON'T FORGET WE'RE HERE. WILL NEVER FORGET YOU'RE HERE. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] >> I REMEMBER WHEN THIS WAS A VIBRANT STATE. I REMEMBER WHEN RONALD REAGAN WAS GOVERNOR. I REMEMBER WHEN PETE WILSON WAS GOVERNOR, THE GREAT DAYS DAYS DAYS OF THE GOLDEN STATE AND NOW YOU CAN SEE WHAT BLUE ONE PARTY RULE DOES, TAKES THE MOST MAGNIFICENT STATE IN THE COUNTRY AND PUTS ITS NUMBER ONE WHERE IT OUGHT TO BE NUMBER 50 AND NUMBER 50 WHERE IT TOOTH BE NUMBER ONE. IT'S DISGRACE WHAT THE LEFT HAS DOWN TO THIS COUNTRY AND THEY'RE TRYING TO DO IT TO THE STATE TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY. WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RUNNING RIGHT NOW, I'M SPEAKING FOR MYSELF, NOT THE LIBRARY HERE. WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE PEOPLE RUNNING ON THE DEMOCRAT SIDE, THEY'RE INSANE. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]

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

>> MARK THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT THIS BOOK, IT FLEW OFF THE SHELF TO BE NUMBER ONE VERY FAST AND I KNOW LIBERTY AND TYRANNY WAS NUMBER ONE, TOOK BUT SEEMS TO BE SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT THIS BOOK AT THIS TIME. ARE YOU ABLE TO COMPLAINT. >> I AM. THE PRESS IS OUT OF CONTROL. THE PRESS IS UNMINDING FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. I MAKE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE MODERN MASS MEDIA AND THE FREE PRESS. CNN IS NOT FREE PRESIDENT. MSNBC IS NOT A FREE PRESS. THE "NEW YORK TIMES" IS NOT FREE PRESS. THE "WASHINGTON POST" IS NOT A FREE PRESS. A FREE PRESS IS A PRESS THAT IS NOT PUSHING THE IDEOLOGICAL AGENDA,N'T THE PACK PARTY OF ONE PART ORE ANOTHER FOOT. CERTAIN PUSH CAN SOCIALING A TIMISM, WHEN YOU TURN ON THE TV TODAY MOST CHANES ARE BROW BEATING YOU WITH THE PROPAGANDA, WITH IF THE LEFT WING AGENDA. HELLO THERE THE LEFT WING AGENTS AND SO FORTH. THAT'S NOT FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS ACTUALLY OCCURRING OUTSIDE THOSE TYPES. IT'S ON THE INTERNET. IT'S WITH WEB SITES, THE BLOGGERS, IT'S WITH NEWS PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MOD DEALERSHIP MEDIA TODAY AND THE PATRIOT MEDIA THAT HELPED FOUND THIS COUNTRY IS THE PATRIOT MEDIA, THE MEN WITH THE PRINTING PRESSES, WITH THE PAMPHLETS, 30 SOME NEWSPAPERS. THAT WAS IT. THEY WERE TRYING TO FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM GOVERNMENT. ... THAT'S DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED WHAT THE PRESS IS SUPPOSED TO BE. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME THERE WAS A LEAK TO THE NEW YORK TIMES THAT WAS HELPFUL TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES? IT NEVER HAPPENS. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME THERE WAS AN EXPOSC IN WASHINGTON POST THAT WAS NEGATIVE ON NANCY PELOSI? IT NEVER HAPPENS. THEY BEAT THIS PRESIDENT, THEY BEAT THIS PRESIDENT, AND THE PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT HIM EVERY DAY. THEY DID IT BEFORE HE WAS ELECTED, THEY DID IT DURING THE ELECTION, THEY'VE DONE IT SINCE THE ELECTION, THEY ARE DOING IT TODAY. THAT'S NOT A FREE PRESS, THAT'S PROPAGANDA, THAT'S WHAT THAT IS [APPLAUSE] AND TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, WHAT THIS BOOK DOES, IT'S NOT A SERVICE LEVEL BOOK, I LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF THE PRESS, LOOK AT THE CONSTITUTION AND I REALLY DUG INTO THE ISSUE OF THE PRESS, WHERE DOES IT COME FROM, WHY IS IT IMPORTANT, I LOOK AT THAT. THEN I LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE, IT'S OVERWHELMING OF WHAT GOES ON IN OUR NEWSROOMS TODAY. THERE IS NO DIVERSITY IN OUR NEWSROOMS.

IT'S ALL ONE WAY. THEN I LOOKED AT HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THINK OF THE PRESS. 80% OF AMERICANS TRUSTED, 80% OF DEMOCRATS DO. WHY DO YOU THINK? THEN I LOOK AT SOCIAL ACTIVISM LIKE CHUCK POT ANNOUNCING ON MEET THE PRESS, WE ARE NOT GOING TO DO CLIMATE CHANGE ANYMORE, I SAID WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY? IS HE SMART? NO. DOES HE HAVE A PARTICULAR BACKGROUND ON THE SUBJECT? NO. IS HE A HACK? YES. OKAY. THERE ARE PHYSICISTS, PHD'S, THE PEOPLE, CLIMATOLOGY, METEOROLOGY, THOUSANDS OF THEM THAT HAVE WRITTEN EXTENSIVELY ABOUT THIS SO NOW THEY ARE BANNED FROM GOING ON MEET THE PRESS BECAUSE WE ARE CLIMATE CHANGE DID LYONS. IS ANYBODY HERE DENIED THIS CLIMATE CHANGE? WHAT WE DENIES THAT THERE IS ANYTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. THERE'S A SON UP THERE. [APPLAUSE] SO I THINK PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR ANSWERS AND PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR ARGUMENTS. AND WHAT IS EXCITING ABOUT THIS BOOK TO ME, AND YOUR REACTION TO IT, WHAT I'M TRYING TO GENERATE HERE, REMEMBER I WAS PART OF THE REAGAN REVOLUTION, THE TEA PARTY REVOLUTION, THE ARTICLE 5 CONVENTION OF STATES REVOLUTION b& [APPLAUSE] AND WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO DO NOW IS DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION AND THOSE WHO WANT TO REMOVE DULY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

WHAT THIS BOOK DOES IS EXPLAIN WHO THEY ARE. BECAUSE THEY ARE POLITICAL, THEY ARE bAND FOR EVER GOING TO GET OUR COUNTRY BACK, IF WE ARE EVER GOING TO GET OUR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS BACK WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH THESE PEOPLE. THAT'S WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT. [APPLAUSE] >> I WAS THINKING WHEN I READ YOUR BOOK THAT IF PRESIDENT TRUMP HAD BEEN GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE IT ITS TITLE HE WOULD CALL IT "FAKE NEWS". [LAUGHTER] >> I WISH I HAD THOUGHT OF THAT. [LAUGHTER]

>> I WAS LISTENING TO YOUR SHOW A FEW MONTHS AGO AND IT BECAME APPARENT, I THINK YOU HAD AN OPPORTUNITY MAY BE QUIETLY AND MAYBE MORE THAN ONCE, I DON'T KNOW, TO SIT WITH OUR PRESIDENT TO TALK WITH OUR PRESIDENT. I'M NOT ASKING YOU TO BETRAY ANY CONVERSATIONS BUT HAVING MET WITH HIM ON SPOKEN WITH HIM, SHOULD WE HAVE ALL THE CONFIDENCE IN HIM THAT YOU THINK WE SHOULD? >> I DON'T MEET WITH HIM THAT OFTEN. THERE IS AN OCCASIONAL CONVERSATION. I WILL TELL YOU, THIS IS A VERY SMART MAN, ENORMOUSLY CHARISMATIC MAN. HE KNOWS WHAT'S GOING ON. HE KNOWS WHERE HE WANTS TO TAKE THE COUNTRY. HE'S NOT ANYTHING LIKE HE'S PORTRAYED IN THE MEDIA. HE'S VERY DEEP. WHEN YOU LOOK AT HIM COMPARED TO BINDERS, IT'S LIKE A JUMP. [LAUGHTER] I WOULD TELL YOU THIS, AND REPUBLICAN PRIMARY bAND IN GENERAL ELECTION I SUPPORTED THE PRESIDENT, TRUMP. AND I'M GLAD I DID. [APPLAUSE] BECAUSE A LOT OF HIS POSITIONS bb [APPLAUSE] A LOT OF HIS POSITIONS ARE SO SOLID AND I DON'T KNOW THAT ANY OF THOSE OTHER REPUBLICANS ON THE STAGE AS I THINK BACK THAT COULD'VE WITHSTOOD WHAT HE'S WITHSTANDING RIGHT NOW.

I THINK WE ARE EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY FORTUNATE THAT HE IS THERE. HE STANDS BETWEEN US AND THEM. AND HE AND HIS FAMILY bb [APPLAUSE] [CHEERING] AND HE AND HIS FAMILY ARE TAKING MORE CRAP THAN ANY PRESIDENT OR FAMILY SHOULD HAVE TO TAKE. IT IS OUTRAGEOUS WHAT THE LEFT GETS AWAY WITH. WHAT PELOSI AND HER HUSBAND GET AWAY WITH. WHAT THESE CHAIRMAN OF THESE COMMITTEES GET AWAY WITH. SO I HAVE TOLD MY FAMILY, I WILL DO WHATEVER I HAVE TO DO, WHETHER GOING ON FOX, THE RADIO, READ ABOUT, TO DEFEND THIS REPUBLIC AND THIS CONSTITUTION AGAINST THE MOB THAT IS TRYING TO FORCIBLY REMOVE A DULY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. [APPLAUSE]

>> ON THE MOB, GOOD POINT, BILL BARR, OUR NEW ATTORNEY GENERAL bb [APPLAUSE] DO YOU THINK, MARK, AS YOU WERE CHIEF OF STAFF WHEN HE WAS ATTORNEY GENERAL, DO YOU THINK THE ATTORNEY GENERAL IS GOING TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF ALL THAT WENT ON BEHIND-THE-SCENES AND ALL THE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES AND THE FBI? DO YOU THINK WE WILL FIND THE TRUTH OF WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?

>> I CANNOT BE MORE PROUD OF BILL BARR. [APPLAUSE] HE DIDN'T HAVE TO TAKE THIS JOB. HE'D BEEN ATTORNEY GENERAL BEFORE, AND ENORMOUSLY SUCCESSFUL GENERAL COUNSEL AND CEO. HE COULD'VE GONE OFF TO THE VILLAGES LIKE ROBERT MUELLER. [LAUGHTER] BUT HE DIDN'T. HE IS COOLHEADED, HE'S COOL AS A CUCUMBER THIS GUY. HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING, THEY WILL HOLD HIM IN CONTEMPT, IS THIS A JOKE? I HOLD THEM IN CONTEMPT BY THE WAY. AND I DON'T NEED A ROPE TO HOLD THEM IN CONTEMPT, I JUST TOLD THEM AND CONTEMPT. HE IS A MAN OF THE LAW. HE COMES OUT OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, HE DOESN'T HAVE ACCESS TO GRAND. HE SEES WE HAVE A ROBIE HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE. HE SEES THAT WE HAVE ROGUE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN.

THAT THEY HAVE ONE OBJECTIVE, WHICH IS TRYING TO DESTROY THIS PRESIDENT AND HIS PRESIDENTS. HE HAD SIX COMMITTEES. USING GOVERNMENT PAY FOR STAFF, USING TAX DOLLARS, THAT HAVE TURNED THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES INTO AN OPPOSITION RESEARCH ORGANIZATION APPENDAGE TO THE DMC, THAT'S WHY THEY WANT IS TAXES AND BANK RECORDS AND FINANCE. I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS IN MY LIFE. HE CHALLENGES THEM.HE SAYS I'M NOT GOING TO GIVE IT TO YOU I WILL GO TO COURT. HE'S GOING TO SUE THEM AND GO TO COURT AND THEY SAY THAT'S AN OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE. [LAUGHTER] THIS IS LIKE THE DUMBEST HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. [LAUGHTER] EVER. [CHEERING] [LAUGHTER] [CHEERING] HE LISTENED TO JERRY NADLER. OR MAYBE NOT. [SHOUTING] YOU LISTEN TO THIS GUY, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE, HE GOES ON, HE WON'T COME ON MY SHOWS, GOES ON MSNBC, CNN, MAYBE RUSSIA TV FALL I KNOW, HE GOES ON AND ON. THE PRESIDENT HAS OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE. WAIT A MINUTE. HE'S A CONGRESS AND THE RUNS OF COMMITTEE, THE COMMITTEE CRIMES? WAS THERE A TRIAL I MISSED? WAS THERE A SENTENCING I MISSED?

JUST BECAUSE A PROSECUTOR WRITES A REPORT DOESN'T MEAN THE PRESIDENT HAS COMMITTED ANYTHING. THEN HE WAVES AROUND THE CONSTITUTION, I GO, HE JUST VIOLATED LIKE THE FOURTH AMENDMENT, THE FIFTH AMENDMENT, SIXTH AMENDMENT, 14TH AMEND, AND YOU ARE WAITING AROUND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. SAYING THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES DOESN'T HONOR IT. IT'S ALMOST LIKE A FREAK SHOW. THEN YOU HAVE NANCY PELOSI WHO SAYS I DON'T WANT IMPEACHMENT. SHE WANTS HIM IN PRISON. [LAUGHTER] THEN YOU HAVE ONE OF THEM, THEY BRING FRIED CHICKEN TO THE MICROPHONE. HE WANTS TO ARREST THE ATTORNEY GENERAL. HANDCUFF HIM TO THE CHAIR. AND TAKEN TO THE CAFETERIA, THEY CALL THIS THEIR PRISON IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. I'M THINKING TO MYSELF, WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OVER HERE? SERIOUSLY. THE KOOKS ARE RUNNING THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.WHAT THE HELL WAS YOUR QUESTION? [LAUGHTER] HE DOESN'T REMEMBER EITHER. >> LET ME SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING. DO YOU THINK THEY WILL DRIVE THIS CAR RIGHT OFF THE CLIFF AND ACTUALLY TRY TO IMPEACH PRESIDENT TRUMP?

>> I THINK THEY WANT TO DRIVE HIS RATINGS DOWN TO ABOUT 37 PERCENT TO 35 PERCENT AT WHICH TIME THEY WILL PULL THE TRIGGER. IF THEY CAN'T GET HIM DOWN THAT FAR, I THINK THEY WILL JUST KEEP POUNDING HIM. KEEP GOING ON TV. WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRESS. THEY KEEP TRYING TO DESTROY HIM SO HE WILL HAVE A DIFFICULT TIME AND REELECTION. I THINK THE MEDIA AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY UNWILLINGLY AND WILLINGLY ARE WORKING HAND IN GLOVE. THEY KNOW THEY CAN DO AND SAY ANYTHING AND BRIAN STELTER AND DON LEMMON AND CHRIS CUOMO ARE GOING TO REPEAT. I THINK THEY ARE TRYING TO DRIVE DOWN HIS RATINGS IF THEY CAN GET THEM DOWN IN THE mid-30s I THINK THEY WILL MAKE A MOVE ON HIM. HERE'S THE PROBLEM, THEY ARE LOOKING AT POLLS RIGHT NOW AND IT'S TOO EARLY TO LOOK AT POLLS BUT THEY LOOK AT POLLS AND THEY SEE THE PRESIDENT BEHIND INITIATIVE, WISCONSIN, SOME OF THESE OTHER STATES. PELOSI IS SITTING THERE THINKING, I DON'T KNOW IF I WANT TO MESS AROUND RIGHT NOW. MAYBE WE CAN WIN THESE STATES. WHAT THEY DON'T WANT TO AWAKEN IS YOU. THEY DON'T WANT TO AWAKEN THE MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WHO ARE EITHER NOT INVOLVED OR ANNOYED BUT WOULD BECOME VERY MUCH MORE ACTIVE AND SHE KNOWS THAT AND SHE'S CONCERNED ABOUT THAT. THAT'S WHY YOU HEAR SOME COMMENTATORS SAY, GO AHEAD, TRY TO IMPEACH THEM. BECAUSE THERE'S MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, YOU ARE TRYING TO IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT FOR WHAT? WE JUST HAD AN INVESTIGATION, THERE IS NO COLLISION. SHE'S WALKING A FINE LINE THAT I THINK IF SHE COULD IMPEACH HIM SHE WOULD. SHE WANTS TO GET THE NUMBERS DOWN I THINK OF TO GET THEM DOWN THEY WILL TRY. YOU SEE HOW WEIRD THIS IS. WE HAVE AN ELECTION COMING UP.

IN LESS THAN TWO YEARS. YOU DON'T NEED TO IMPEACH ANYBODY. PARTICULARLY SINCE THE SENATE IS NOT GOING TO REMOVE HIM. IT'S ALL A FAN DANCE. THEY ARE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHETHER THEY IMPEACH HIM TO MAKE SURE HE DOESN'T WIN REELECTION OR JUST PRETEND THEY ARE INVESTIGATING BUT NOT IMPEACHING HIM TO TRY TO MAKE SURE HE DOESN'T WIN REELECTION. IN THE MEANTIME, CHINA IS ON THE MOVE, IRAN IS ON THE MOVE, NORTH KOREA IS ON THE MOVE, ALL THESE COUNTRIES ARE ON THE MOVE. IN THE MEANTIME, THERE'S A DISASTER ON THE BORDER, THEY DON'T CARE, THEY ARE NOT FOCUSED ON THAT, AND I THINK THAT'S WHAT THE REPUBLICANS NEED TO FOCUS ON. [APPLAUSE]

>> DOES HE GET REELECTED? >>. [SHOUTING] [CHEERING] >> I'M NOT NOSTRADAMUS, FIRST OF ALL. [LAUGHTER] I THINK IN THE END THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ELECT HIM PRESIDENT THE UNITED STATES AGAIN. I THINK HE DESERVES IT. [CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] BUT I DON'T THINK IT'S A SURE THING AND I DON'T THINK THEY THINK IT'S A SURE THING EITHER. WHAT YOU THINK THERE'S OPEN BORDERS? WHY DO YOU THINK RED STATES ARE BECOMING PURPLE. WHAT YOU THINK PURPLE STATES ARE BECOMING BLUE? WHY DO YOU THINK RONALD REAGAN COULDN'T GET ELECTED DOG CATCHER IN THE STATE TODAY? OR COLORADO HAS GONE BLUE, OR NEVADA HAS GONE BLUE. WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF STATE. SO I THINK IT'S A PROBLEM. BY THE WAY, AS A FOOTNOTE, THIS IS WHY I AM ANNOYED BY SOME OF THESE PSEUDO-CONSTITUTIONAL CONSERVATIVES WHEN THE PRESIDENT IS TRYING TO SECURE THE BORDER.

I TAKE A BACKSEAT TO NOBODY WHEN IT COMES TO THE CONSTITUTION. YOU HAVE A NATIONAL EMERGENCY ACT OF 1976 THAT HAS BEEN USED OVER 50 FARMS DUMB AT TIMES. DID YOU EVER HEAR THE PSEUDO-CONSTITUTIONAL ASSERTIVE'S USED OBJECT? THEY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THE LAW EXISTED, AS A MATTER FACT. THE PRESIDENT IS USING STATUTORY AUTHORITY, HE'S USING THE BUDGETARY AUTHORITY, HE'S USING ALL THE RELEVANT AUTHORITIES THAT HAVE BEEN USED BY OTHER PRESIDENTS. THERE ARE ASPECTS OF THAT LAW I DON'T LIKE BUT IS NOT USING THE ASPECTS OF THAT LAW THAT I DON'T LIKE. SO WE CAN HAVE INSTRUCTION ABOUT THAT. ALSO THIS TARIFF THING, I'M NOT A BIG TARIFF GUY EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO CHINA AND I THINK CHINA IS THE ENEMY. CHINA NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED. ECONOMICALLY, AND MILITARILY. [APPLAUSE] CHINA IS NOT A JOKE, CHINA IS GOING TO BE THE NUMBER ONE SUPERPOWER IF THIS PRESIDENT IS NOT REELECTED. I'M GOING TO TELL YOU THAT RIGHT NOW. THAT SAID, HE'S NOT USING, HE MIGHT BE SAYING HE'S USING TARIFFS ON TRADE WITH CHINA THE WAY I LOOK AT IT, IS USING IT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY BECAUSE THEY KEEP STEALING OUR STUFF AND THAT'S A GOOD ENOUGH REASON. WHEN YOU LOOK AT MEXICO, THIS IS A NATIONAL SECURITY PROBLEM. WE HAVE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TRYING TO GET INTO THIS COUNTRY IN THE COMMUNITIES YOU HAVE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE BEING RELEASED IN THE COMMUNITY. THE MAYORS DON'T KNOW, THE CITY COUNCIL DON'T KNOW, THE COMMUNITY DOESN'T KNOW. A FIVE PERCENT TARIFF I HEAR PEOPLE SAY, YOU KNOW WHAT THAT'S GOING TO DO TO THE COST OF GOODS?

I KNOW WHAT THAT'S GOING TO DO IS TO DRIVE UP THE COST OF GOODS. 1. 1 ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE GOING TO DO THIS COUNTRY? IT'S GOING TO DRIVE UP THE COST OF PROPERTY TAXES AND SCHOOLING A LAW ENFORCEMENT AND HEALTHCARE. THIS ISN'T A COSTING TO ME, THIS IS A PRESIDENT WHO'S GETTING NO HELP FROM THE DEMOCRATS.THE REPUBLICANS WHEN THEY CONTROL THE SENATE OF THE HOUSE DIDN'T DO A DAMNED THING TO SECURE THE BORDER. AND SHE'S TRYING TO FIX IT. [APPLAUSE]

>> ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER I REMEMBER ABOUT A MONTHS WORTH OF TIME. >>. [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHTER] I'M JUST KIDDING. HE ALREADY BOUGHT IT, IT DOESN'T MATTER. I'M KIDDING. >> IT USED TO BE, YOU MIGHT REMEMBER, THE SOUTHERN BORDER PROBLEM WAS A MANUFACTURED CRISIS. >> FOUR MONTHS AGO. NOW IT'S, OKAY MAYBE IT'S A CRISIS BUT IT'S YOUR FAULT MR. PRESIDENT. HOW DID WE GO FROM THERE TO THERE?

>> BECAUSE THEY LIVE. ONE OF THE LINES THEY WERE USING ON THIS PRESIDENT WHEN THEY WERE SEPARATING CHILDREN FROM ADULTS BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATS, SEPARATING CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS. WE NOW KNOW AND ALMOST 40% OF THE CASES THEY WORK TO THEIR PARENTS. THEY WERE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IF THESE WERE PREDATORS, PERVERTS, WHAT'S GOING ON HERE? YOU CAN'T JUST SEND THE LITTLE KIDS ON WITH THESE ADULTS, WE DON'T KNOW WHO THEY ARE AND WE DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO GET INFORMATION ON A LOT OF THEM. BUT IT WAS CURIOUS TO ME WHEN THEY SAID IT'S LIKE TRAINING CAMPS. BECAUSE I WANTED TO REMIND THEM IT WAS THEIR GREAT HERO FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT WHO ACTUALLY SET UP INTERNMENT CAMPS AND PUT JAPANESE-AMERICANS AND AMERICANS OF JAPANESE DESCENT IN A INTERNMENT CAMPS. WHEN YOU LOOK AT MOST OF THE REAL HORRORS DONE IN THIS COUNTRY, IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND MORE RECENTLY THE LEFT THAT IS ABUSED POWER. SO TRUMP TO SET UP INTERNMENT CAMPS, THAT WOULD BE YOUR HERO FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT. WHEN HE WAS TRYING TO DO AND WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO DO IS MAKE SURE THOSE KIDS ARE SAFE. BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW WHO THEY ARE WITH. IT'S RATHER STRANGE TO HAVE A POLITICAL PARTY bbI CAN TALK ABOUT THE REPUBLICANS TOO, IT'S RATHER STRANGE TO HAVE POLITICAL PARTY IN THIS COUNTRY THAT HATES THE COUNTRY. I TOLD HIM VERY PROVOCATIVE WHEN I SAY THESE THINGS BUT I DON'T CARE.

YOU HAVE A DEMOCRATIC PARTY THAT PUTS PARTY FIRST. THAT'S WHAT THE HARD LEFT DOES. 31ST. I DON'T PUT REPUBLICAN FIRST, DO YOU? WE ARE AMERICANS. WE PUT THE COUNTRY FIRST. I TALKED ABOUT AMERICANISM. THEY PUT THE PARTY FIRST. THE PARTY THAT ATTACKS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ECONOMIC SYSTEM ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, THE BEST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, THE MOST BENEFICENT LAW ENFORCEMENT ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, THE MOST COURAGEOUS MILITARY ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF DESTROYING IT WHILE THEY WAITED AROUND, WHAT KIND OF A PARTY IS THIS? LISTEN TO THESE CANDIDATES WHO ARE RUNNING, A SYSTEMICALLY RACIST COUNTRY WHEN PEOPLE SOUTH OF THE BORDER WHO DON'T HAPPEN TO BE CAUCASIAN ARE TRYING TO POUR INTO THIS COUNTRY BY THE MILLIONS, WHY WOULD THEY TRY TO COME INTO A SYSTEMICALLY RACIST COUNTRY? WHERE YOU HAVE PEOPLE TRYING TO COME INTO THIS COUNTRY TO MAKE A LIVING AND THEY TALK ABOUT THE WAGE GAP. FIRST OF ALL, WHAT WAGE GAP? GET OFF YOUR ASS AND EARN WHATEVER YOU WANT TO. THERE ISN'T A WAGE GAP. [APPLAUSE] ANYWAY. I SPEAK FOR MYSELF, NOT THE REAGAN LIBRARY. [LAUGHTER] IT'S WELL KNOWN. >> DO YOU BELIEVE bb THEY SAY TRUMPS TWEETS ARE OFFENSIVE. NOT TO ME. [LAUGHTER]

>> DO BELIEVE THESE NUMBERS RECENTLY ABOUT THE SURVEYS SHOWING 51 PERCENT OF OUR NATIONS LUNG YOUNG bbNATIONS YOUNG PEOPLE ARE IN FAVOR OF SOCIALISM? DO THEY KNOW WHAT'S SOCIALISM IS? >> YES AND NO, THEY FAVORITE, YES. THAT'S LIKE ASKING IF SEVEN EUROS FAVOR SANTA CLAUS. I SUPPOSE THEY DO. IF YOU ARE ACTUALLY A LITTLE MORE SOBER AND THINK THINGS THROUGH A LITTLE BIT, WHAT DOES SOCIALISM CREATE? NOTHING. SOCIALISM IS AN IDEOLOGY. CAPITALISM IS A REALITY. CAPITALISM IS ABOUT COMMERCE AND TRADE. NOBODY INVENTED CAPITALISM. PEOPLE VOLUNTARILY CAME TOGETHER, THEY TRADED, THERE WAS COMMERCE, PEOPLE WANTED SOME THINGS, PEOPLE CREATED SOME THINGS. WE DIDN'T NEED A MARQUES. IS THERE SOMEBODY WHO CREATED CAPITALISM OUT THERE THE WAY MARQUES CREATED MARXISM? NO. IT'S A CALL SINCE THEN THE HUMAN CONDITION THAT EXISTS. NATURAL LAW, INDIVIDUAL FREE WILL, THINGS OF THAT, CAPITALISM IS ABOUT WHAT'S BETWEEN YOUR EARS. CREATIVITY, MAKING SOMETHING BETTER THAN IT IS. SOCIALISM IS ABOUT GOVERNMENT. REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. PUNISHING PEOPLE, TAKING FROM PEOPLE, DOING ALL THESE OTHER THINGS. SO CAPITALISM IS NOT TAUGHT IN OUR UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, IT'S NOT TAUGHT IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

IT NEEDS TO BE. BUT THEY HAVE A MONOPOLY OVER OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES, MOSTLY DUE TO TENURE AS A MATTER FACT. THE MOST YOUNG PEOPLE BELIEVE IN SOCIALISM? YES. NOT ALL. BUT MOST. IT ALSO, DO THEY KNOW WHAT IT IS? NO. BECAUSE ON ONE HAND THEY OPPOSE AUTHORITY. ON THE OTHER HAND THAT'S A AUTHORITARIAN. I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS A LOT AND THAT'S ACTUALLY, HE DID TELL YOU, MY NEXT BOOK I BEEN THINKING ABOUT A LOT. [LAUGHTER] AGREEMENT HAVE A TITLE FOR IT I'M JUST KIDDING. I WILL ANNOUNCE IT HERE SO ANY OF THE BACKBENCHERS YOU MY WITNESS. ACADEMIC UNFREEDOM. BECAUSE I THINK THAT'S WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. THAT'S A MONOPOLY WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH. AND BECAUSE IT'S LACED WITH GOVERNMENT, THE GOVERNMENT CAN DEAL WITH IT. WHAT I MEAN BY THAT IS WE SUBSIDIZE AROUND DEMISE. WE SHOULDN'T LEAVE IT TO FACULTY TO CHOOSE OTHER FACULTY. THERE OUGHT NOT BE ONE OR TWO YEARS AFTER WHICH YOU GET TENURE. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. I GOT TO THINK IT THROUGH BUT I WANT TO ADDRESS THAT ONE DAY. WE REALLY SHOULD BE ABLE TO ADDRESS YOUNGER PEOPLE WITH THE MESSAGE OF LIBERTY.

BECAUSE I THINK YOUNG PEOPLE CAN BE ATTRACTED TO LIBERTY. I DON'T MEAN JUST LIBERTY IN SMOKING POT OR WHATEVER IT IS. I MEAN LIBERTY AS A HUMAN CONDITION. CAN YOU NAME, THIS IS RHETORICAL, CAN YOU NAME ANY LIVING REPUBLICANS IN THE SENATE OR THE HOUSE TO TALK ABOUT LIBERTY? NO. THEY TALK LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME. SOME OF THEM UNSPOKEN HERE SO I WILL CREATE ANY PROBLEMS. AND THEY THROW IN WITH BIG GOVERNMENT AND THEY ARE OKAY WITH THAT. NOBODY TO LIBERTY. BUT WHAT DOES LIBERTY MEAN? WHY IS LIBERTY IMPORTANT? HOW DOES THAT CREATE OPPORTUNITY? HOW DOES THAT CREATE WEALTH. INSTEAD WE GET FREE STUFF. WHEN WE SAY FREEDOM WE DON'T MEAN FREE STUFF. WE DON'T HAVE A PUBLIC DISCUSSION, THE LEFT DRIVES THE PUBLIC DISCUSSION, THEY DRIVE THE DISCUSSION AND COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES AND THEN WE ARE SHOCKED WHEN 51 PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE UNDER THE AGE OF 21 BELIEVE IN SOCIALISM. HAS ANYBODY EXPLAINED THE OPPOSITE TO THEM? NO.

>> YOU GOT SOME FAMILY LIVING IN CALIFORNIA, YOUR FRIENDS IN CALIFORNIA, A LOT OF FRIENDS HERE, YOU HURT MY LITANY OF PROBLEMS AT THE OUTSET. DO YOU THINK THERE IS HOPE FOR THE STATE? I KNOW YOU ARE 3000 MILES AWAY BUT YOU TALK ABOUT IT SOME, WHAT DO YOU THINK IT'S GOING? >> THE PROBLEM HERE IS THEY HAVE A CHOKEHOLD ON THE GOVERNMENT. AND THEY REDRESSED IT IN WAYS THAT THEY ENSURE THE REELECTION. THE ACTUALLY CHANGE THE DEMOGRAPHICS AND THE POPULARITY OF THE STATE, THEY CHANGE THE VOTING IN THE STATE. SO IF THE REPUBLICAN LOSES THEY KEEP COMING UNTIL A DEMOCRAT WINS.

[LAUGHTER] YOU HAVE EVERY ASPECT OF A TYRANNY IN THIS STATE. AND IT'S VERY HARD TO BREAK THROUGH. AND PEOPLE LIKE SCHWARZENEGGER AND OTHERS WHO WERE REALLY FOCUSED ON SELF AND NOT FOCUSED ON PROPER GOVERNANCE. THIS STATE WAS REALLY, TO BRAG FOR ALL AROUND THE WORLD YOU HAD CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS. MOSTLY REPUBLICAN LEGISLATURES. YOU PEOPLE MOVING TO CALIFORNIA WAS THE STATE OF OPPORTUNITY. WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN PENN STATE, EVERYBODY WANTED TO COME TO CALIFORNIA. IT'S A COMEDY WAS HOT, YOU HAD, IT'S STILL IS A BEAUTIFUL STATE. IT WAS A STATE THAT EVERYBODY WANTED TO GO TO. NOW IT'S A STATE EVERYBODY WANTS TO LEAVE. THAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM AND US. YOU LOOK AT FLORIDA, EVERY IS MOVING TO FLORIDA RIGHT NOW. THEY HAVE NO INCOME TAX. THE DEMOCRATS KEEP TRYING TO PUT AN INCOME TAX. THERE'S FOUR OR FIVE STATES THAT HAVE NO INCOME TAX. BUSTLING STATES, PEOPLE ARE MOVING TO THOSE STATES. WHAT GETS ME THOUGH IS THAT YOU HAVE PEOPLE WHO THEY SPEND THEIR HOME LIFE IN NEW YORK OR NEW YORK CITY, THEY VOTE DEMOCRAT, VOTE DEMOCRAT, VOTE DEMOCRAT TO GET A BIG PENSION, THEY MOVED TO FLORIDA AND BOAT DEMOCRAT. I CALL THEM LOCUSTS. [APPLAUSE] YOU HAVE ONE CRAZY PROPOSAL AFTER ANOTHER COMING OUT OF YOUR LEGISLATURE. SO CRAZY THAT YOUR FORMER CRAZY GOVERNOR BROWN HAD A VETO SOME OF THAT. I'M CRAZY BUT YOU ARE EVEN CRAZIER THAN I AM. LIKE THE ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY ON THE RAILWAY.

PEOPLE SHOULD GO TO PRISON FOR STUFF LIKE THAT. THEY REALLY SHOULD. THIS IS THE IDEOLOGY OF THE LEFT. IT'S LIKE OBAMACARE, OBAMACARE bbIT WAS NEVER SOLVE EVERYTHING. NOBODY SAYS A WORD ABOUT OBAMACARE. IT'S MEDICARE FOR ALL. LOCUSTS. THEY DESTROY ONE THING, THEY MOVE ONTO THE NEXT THING AND HAVE YOU READ THE FIRST CHAPTER OF MY BOOK, THE MINDSET IS THIS. YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO GIVE UP MORE OF YOUR WEALTH AND MORE OF YOUR FREEDOM BECAUSE THEIR PROPOSALS ARE IMPOSSIBLE. THEY CANNOT WORK. BUT THEY ARE NOT bTHEY DO NOT BLAME THEMSELVES. THEY BLAME THE PEOPLE RUNNING IT OR THE POPULATION BUT WE DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH RESOURCES OR THERE'S TOO MANY RICH PEOPLE, WHATEVER IT IS. IT'S NEVER THEIR IDEOLOGIES SO WHAT DO THEY DO? THEY DOUBLE DOWN, DOUBLE DOWN, DOUBLE DOWN AND LIVE. MEDICARE IS MEDICARE FOR NOBODY. WHAT THAT MEANS IS NO MEDICARE, NO PRIVATE HEALTHCARE, AND BERNIE SANDERS IS IN CHARGE. THAT'S WHAT THAT MEANS. [LAUGHTER]

>> I WANT TO TURN IT TO THE AUDIENCE TO ASK QUESTIONS. I BET YOU THERE IS A BUNCH. WE HAVE STAFF GOING TO ALL THE AISLES THAT HAVE A MICROPHONE, IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION, RAISE YOUR HAND AND WE WILL START RIGHT OVER HERE. >> THANKS FOR TAKING MY QUESTION. IT WAS A QUESTION YOU ASKED, MARK, THEY DIDN'T KNOW HE ANSWERED CORRECTLY WHEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT BILL BARR AND HIS INVESTIGATION AND WHERE THAT WAS GOING TO LEAD AND WHAT HE THOUGHT MIGHT COME OF THAT.

>> I GOT RAMBLING I FORGOT. [LAUGHTER] I THINK WE HAVE A SHOT AT IT. I THINK WE HAVE A GOOD SHOT AT IT. AND I THINK IT'S CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT, OBVIOUSLY, BECAUSE WHAT WE HAD HERE WAS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION INTERFERING WITH THE LAST ELECTION. RUSSIANS ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO INTERFERE AND I'M NOT ONE OF THESE CODE PINK REPUBLICANS BECAUSE RUSSIA PASSED, PUTIN IS THE ENEMY, THEY ARE BUZZING OUR SHIPS, TRYING TO KNOCK OUT OUR SHIPS, THEY ARE PROPPING UP VENEZUELA EVEN THOUGH THEY PRETEND TO BE bOF VENEZUELA. PUTIN IS A MENACE, IS A PROBLEM, THE RUSSIANS ARE A MENACE, THEY ARE A PROBLEM. BY THE WAY, I KNOW RUSSIANS, MIGHT ANCESTORS ARE RUSSIANS. I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THEM TO QUESTION ME. [LAUGHTER] BUT THE GREATEST DANGER JEFFERSON TALKED ABOUT, LINCOLN, JOSEPH, IT'S A DANGER FROM WITHIN. WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT PUTTING SPIES INTO ANOTHER CAMPAIGN, WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT ABUSING THESE COURTS. WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT TRYING TO TAKE OUT A CANDIDATE AND THEN A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, YOU HAVE A HUGE PROBLEM ON YOUR HANDS. THE DEMOCRATS DO NOT WANT TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS, THE MEDIA DO NOT WANT TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF IT BECAUSE THEY ARE INVOLVED IN IT. THE MEDIA, PEOPLE SAY TO ME, WHY WILL THE MEDIA AT LEAST ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG ABOUT THE RUSSIAN COLLISION? THEY WERE IN ON IT. WHY ARE THERE GOING TO ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG.

WHO DO YOU THINK THEY WERE LEAKING TO? THEY WERE LEAKING TO THE NEW YORK TIMES TWO YEARS AGO I POINTED OUT I WAS LOOKING AT THE NEWSPAPERS. THEY WERE IN ON IT. THE MEDIA IS IN ON IT. THE MEDIA ARE AN APPENDAGE OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY. THEY PUSHED THE PROGRESSIVE AGENDA. THAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH THE MEDIA. LOOK. PEOPLE WANT TO FEEL GOOD AND WANT TO SAY, WERE TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GO TO JAIL. I DON'T KNOW BUT I WILL SAY THIS, IT'S A GOOD THING HE'S THE ATTORNEY GENERAL. HE USES THE RIGHT WORDS, PLAIN ENGLISH LIKE SPY. HE'S GOT A REAL U.S. ATTORNEY IN CONNECTICUT LOOKING INTO THIS. THE INSPECTOR GENERAL WHO WAS APPOINTED BY OBAMA BUT SEEMS TO BE A STRAIGHT SHOOTER WORRIED ABOUT HIM THERE ALREADY STARTING TO TRASH HIM. I'D SAY FINALLY WE ARE ON THE OFFENSE AND DEFENSE AND THAT'S A GOOD THING. [APPLAUSE]

>> HELLO, YOU TALKED ABOUT THE RADICAL CHOKEHOLD IN CALIFORNIA. SOME OF THAT HAS TO DO WITH VOTING AND THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF LEGISLATION THE bbALL OF THOSE THINGS THAT HAVE PASSED IN CALIFORNIA. HOW CAN WE CITIZENS, HOW CAN WE RESPOND TO THAT AND BREAK LOOSE OF THIS TO RADICAL CHOKEHOLD AT THE VOTING BOOTH AND OTHERWISE? >> I DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR YOU. [LAUGHTER] IF I DID YOU WOULDN'T ASK ME THAT QUESTION. I DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER. IT'S A BIG PROBLEM. SOMETIMES THINGS HAVE TO COLLAPSE BEFORE YOU REBUILD THEM. THIS STATE IS HEADED FOR BANKRUPTCY. I WILL BE DAMNED AS A VIRGINIAN IF I'M GOING TO BAIL OUT ALL THE LEFT LANE COOKED DEMOCRATS IN THE STATE. [APPLAUSE] BUT I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE THE ONE-PARTY RULE STUFF IS VERY DIFFICULT TO BREAK THROUGH. YOU ARE RIGHT. ALL THE CHANGES TO VOTING HAVE BEEN MADE TO HELP THE DEMOCRAT PARTY. THE BORDERS OPEN TO HELP THE DEMOCRAT PARTY. IF THOSE WERE FUTURE REPUBLICANS POURING OVER THE BORDER CONVEYED REBUILDING 100 FOOT WALL WITH MOATS AND ALLIGATORS AND MACHINE GUNS AND EVERYTHING ELSE. BUT THOSE ARE FUTURE DEMOCRATS. AT LEAST THEY FEEL THEY ARE. SAME WITH THE CHANGES IN THE BORDER RULES. THEY ARE ALL INTENDED TO HELP THE DEMOCRATS HOLD THE POWER FOREVER. THAT'S WHY THEY WANT TO GET RID OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE, EXACTLY THE SAME THING. EVEN THOUGH THEY WOULD UNDERMINE THE WHOLE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLICAN NOTION THAT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION THE DEMOCRATS AND THE MEDIA LIKE TO SAY COUNT THE VOTE. THE POPULAR VOTE, ONE PERSON ONE VOTE. EXCEPT FOR WHEN THEY LOSE. THEN IT'S, GO TO THE COURTS. OR GO TO THE PERMANENT BUREAUCRACY. IT REALLY IS AND IS JUST TO JUSTIFY THE MEANS FOR THAT PARTY AND TO THE LEFT. WE TAKE THE VOTE IF THEY WIN, REJECT THE VOTE IF THEY LOSE. SUPPORT THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE IF THEY WIN, OPPOSE IT IF THEY LOSE. GERRYMANDERING YES, IF THEY CAN USE IT, GERRYMANDERING KNOW IF THEY CAN. IT'S A VERY DANGEROUS PARTY. THAT'S BEEN TAKEN OVER BY A VERY RADICAL IDEOLOGY, THERE ARE VERY FEW SANCTIONS LEFT IN THAT PARTY, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE RADICAL PROGRESSIVES AND OLD-TIME LIBERALS. THERE IS VERY FEW OLD-TIME LIBERALS LEFT IN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.>> RIGHT HERE. >> HEY MARK, GIVEN JOE BIDEN WAS THE DUMBEST MAN TO EVER SERVE IN THE SENATE, AND DUMBEST MAN TO EVER SERVE AS VICE PRESIDENT, WHAT ARE YOU THINK HIS CHANCES ARE OF BECOMING THE DUMBEST MAN TO SERVE AS PRESIDENT?[APPLAUSE] >> IF HE IS ELECTED, HE WILL BE. [LAUGHTER] ALTHOUGH, THERE'S CARTER. [LAUGHTER] YOU NOTICE ALL THE REPUBLICANS ARE STUPID AT ALL BUT DEMOCRATS ARE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS? YOU NOTICE THAT? HE'S GOT A SHOT AT IT. LOOK AT THE STAKES. WE HAVE FEWER AND FEWER OPPORTUNITIES OF WINNING. 25 YEARS AGO I REMEMBER READING THE ARTICLES BY HISTORIANS THAT SAID THE DEMOCRATS ARE GOING TO LOSE AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE, IT WAS AFTER TWO REAGAN MASSIVE VICTORIES, THERE WAS JUST TOO MANY RED STATES. SO THE DEMOCRATS FIGURE, WE GOT TO CHANGE THESE STATES. AND HOW DO YOU CHANGE THE STATES? CHANGE THE POPULATIONS. IT'S LIKE YOUR STATE HERE, YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT IT. IT'S BECOMING SO DIFFICULT TO EVEN GET THE VOTE OUT, TO GET THE NUMBERS ARE COMING TO GET THE CHANGE, PEOPLE WASH THEIR HANDS AND THEY LEAVE. THEY GIVE UP ON THE SYSTEM WHILE THEY KEEP PUMPING UP THERE SIDE USING STATE LAW, FEDERAL LAW TO DO THAT, DOES JOE BIDEN HAVE A CHANCE? YES. A LOOK AT THESE POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS AS MILITARY OPERATIONS. I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT GUNS AND ALL THAT. I'M SAYING, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE BUT WE REALLY HAVE TO BE SMART. THEY NOW KNOW THAT TRUMP WON WISCONSIN. IN MICHIGAN, MINNESOTA, AND SOME OF THESE OTHER STATES, BUT VERY FEW VOTE. DO NOT BELIEVE THOSE STATES ALONE THIS TIME. THERE CAN IMPORT RESOURCES AND MONEY INTO THOSE STATES. THEY ALREADY HAVE CREATED THIS CHARACTER AROUND JOE BIDEN. HOW IS JOE BIDEN A BLUE-COLLAR DEMOCRAT? THE GUY HAS BEEN IN GOVERNMENT FOR HALF A CENTURY. HE GETS OUT OF LAW SCHOOL AND HE WINS THE WILMINGTON CITY COUNCIL AT THE AGE OF LIKE 12. THEN HE GETS ELECTED TO THE SENATE AT 29, SWORN IN AT 30. BLUE-COLLAR bbWITH THE ELECTRICIAN IN BETWEEN? A PLUMBER IN BETWEEN? THEN THEY USED TO CALL HIM LUNCH BUCKET DRILL. LUNCH BUCKET JOE, WHEN DID HE CARRY A LUNCH BUCKET THIS DOCUMENT HE NEVER CARRIED A LUNCH BUCKET. THEY'VE CREATED THIS GUY LIKE HE IS BLUE-COLLAR JOE. HE'S A BLUE-COLLAR BILLIONAIRE IN OFFICE, THAT'S THE NAME I'VE GIVEN HIM. AND THE UNIONS SHOULD BE BACKING HIM TO THE HILLS. BECAUSE WHAT DO YOU THINK GREEN NEW DEAL IS ALL ABOUT? IT'S GOING TO DESTROY UNION JOBS, IT'S GOING TO DESTROY BLUE-COLLAR JOBS. IT'S GOING TO DESTROY THE BUILDING, THIS IS THE LANGUAGE THEY USE AND THEY IMPORTED THE STUFF FROM YORK. THEY WANTED TO D INDUSTRIALIZE AMERICA. IT'S ABOUT DE-GROWTH, THESE ARE WORDS THEY INVENT MUCH LIKE D TRAIN OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT OR DEPLANE. WORDS I NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE. WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SECURE THAT WET. THEY THROWN IN WITH THE RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT. THE RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT HATES ASSEMBLY LINES. HATES SMOKESTACKS. HATES PROGRESS, HATES TECHNOLOGY. AND WE SHOULD EXPLOIT THAT BECAUSE THAT'S WHO THOSE PEOPLE ARE, TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, IT'S A PERFECT CAMPAIGN ALMOST PERFECT CAMPAIGN AND THE RIGHT ISSUES ARE RAISED HE IS TO FIGHT THROUGH THE MEDIA IS GOING TO BE AT HIM EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. I THINK TRUMP WILL WIN BUT DOES BIDEN HAVE A SHOT? OF COURSE BIDEN HAS A SHOT. AND HE IS SO STUPID. THE THING THIS GUY SAYS, HE JUST IS. THE THINGS THIS GUY SAYS, UNBELIEVABLE, NOBODY COULD GET AWAY WITH IT. bb [LAUGHTER] WHO EVEN TALKS LIKE THIS? OKAY. BUT THEY'RE GOING TO GIVE HIM A PASS AND PROTECT THEM. HIS SON IS ALL GUMMED UP IN CORRUPTION BUT THERE TO GIVE THEM A PASS, THEY'RE GONNA TRY TO PROTECT THEM. IT'S GOING TO BE UP TO THE PRESIDENT AND US TO GET THE MESSAGE TO OUR FELLOW CITIZENS. >> APPEAR IN THE BALCONY. >> THANK YOU MARK, YOU AND YOUR FAMILY COMING OUT HERE AND DOING WHAT YOU DO. MY QUESTION IS TWOFOLD, IT SEEMS LIKE THE DEMOCRATS ALWAYS RALLY AND THEY ALWAYS GET THE MEMO ON THE NEWS, ALL THE NEWS CHANNELS ARE ALWAYS TALKING THE SAME LANGUAGE, SPEAKING THE SAME TERMS AND THE REPUBLICANS PUT THEIR TAILS BETWEEN THEIR LEGS AND DON'T RALLY BEHIND OUR PRESIDENT. THAT'S MY FIRST QUESTION, IT'S VERY FRUSTRATING TO ME WHEN THEY FLIP-FLOP OUR OWN PARTY. NUMBER TWO, I BELIEVE SENATOR CRUZ MAY HAVE BROUGHT IT UP A WHILE AGO WITH THE CONVICTION OF EL CHAPO SAYING THAT WE COULD MAYBE SEIZE ASSETS IN EXCESS OF MAYBE $18 BILLION THAT WOULD PAY FOR THE WALL, MEXICO WOULD BE PAYING FOR THE WALL. COMMENTS ON THAT. [APPLAUSE] >> IN THE OLD DAYS WE WOULD HAVE SEEN MEXICO. NO OFFENSE. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] REMEMBER THE DAYS WHEN bb NEVERMIND. PATTON GOT A JEEP, REMEMBER THAT? HE PUT A MACHINE GUN ON THE JEEP. [LAUGHTER] AND HE CHASED THEM OUT OF TEXAS. I WAS ASKED BY BEN SHAPIRO THE OTHER DAY, WHO WERE ONE OF MY FAVORITE PRESIDENTS I SAID JAMES POULTON, YOU KNOW WHY? BECAUSE CALIFORNIA, ARIZONA, NEW MEXICO, AND OTHER PARTS OF THE UNITED STATES WERE SEIZED. AND BECAME PART OF THE UNITED STATES. SO I'VE ALWAYS HAD AN AFFINITY FOR JAMES POLK. [LAUGHTER] I'M NOT SURE HOW TO ANSWER YOUR SECOND PART OF YOUR QUESTION. THE FIRST PART OF YOUR QUESTION I LOOK AT GUYS LIKE MITT ROMNEY AND I SAY TO MYSELF bb THE SENATE IS FILLED WITH GUYS LIKE THIS. THE FIRST THING HE DOES IS HE COMES IN OFFICE AND WRITES AN OP-ED IN THE WASHINGTON POSTER TRASHING THE PRESIDENT. THEY KNOW TO GO TO MITT ROMNEY NOW TO TRASH THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND GOD REST HIS SOUL HE'S THE NEW JOHN McCAIN. HE WANTS TO BE THAT BECAUSE MAYBE HE HARBORS A DESIRE TO RUN AGAIN, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS. HE COMES FROM A VERY RED STATE. IT'S BEEN AFFECTED BY A LOT OF WHAT'S GOING ON IN CALIFORNIA AND SOME OTHER STATES. YOU THINK YOU'D BE A LEADER FOR CONSERVATIVES AND HE'S NOT. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HAS TO FIGHT THESE PEOPLE. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES STARED DOWN MEXICO WITH A FIVE PERCENT TARIFF AND THE REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO THE MEDIA AND TALKING ABOUT, WE CAN'T DO THIS AND WE CAN'T DO THAT, MEANWHILE, WHAT THE HELL HAVE THEY DONE, MITCH McCONNELL HAS BEEN THERE FOR 112 YEARS, WHAT HAS HE DONE ABOUT THE BORDER? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. IT'S A BIG PROBLEM. AND YOU ARE RIGHT, THEY WOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS TO OBAMA. EVER. NANCY PELOSI STARES AT ONE OF THEM, THEY MELT AND BACK OFF. KEVIN McCARTHY STARES AT ONE OF THEM AND THEY LAUGHED, QUITE FRANKLY. THEY DO WHATEVER THEY WANT TO DO. THE DEMOCRAT PARTY IS UNITED IN PROMOTING THE DEMOCRAT PARTY. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS JUST NOT A UNITED PARTY AND IN MANY WAYS. I OFTEN TELL MY WIFE, WE ARE GOING TO MISS TRUMP WHEN HE'S GONE. [APPLAUSE] AND I'M A REAGAN GUY. I'M ALSO A TRUMP GUY. [CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] [CHEERING] WE ARE GOING TO MISS HIM. BECAUSE HE'S NOT GEORGE W. BUSH. BECAUSE HE'S A FIGHTER. HE TAKES ON THE MEDIA. HE TAKES ON THE DEMOCRAT PARTY. HE TAKES ON INDIVIDUALS IN HIS OWN PARTY AND CALLS THEM AS HE SEES THEM. THIS IS WHAT DRIVES THEM NUTS. NUMBER TWO, COULD HE SAY THINGS A DIFFERENT WAY? YES, BUT HE DOESN'T WANT TO. MAYBE IF THEY STOP CALLING HIM HITLER AND STALIN AND MUSSOLINI AND WHITE SUPREMACIST AND ANTI-SEMI ANTIRACIST, MAYBE HE WOULDN'T CALL THEM NASTY. OR A KOOK. OR WHATEVER. HE DOESN'T CALL THEM THE NAMES THAT THEY CALL HIM ON A DAILY BASIS. BUT WE ARE GOING TO MISS HIM FOR A LOT OF REASONS. NUMBER ONE, HE FIGHTS. HE FIGHTS.[APPLAUSE] HE IS NOT A PHILOSOPHICAL CONSERVATIVE. BUT IN MOST WAYS HE IS A CONSERVATIVE. I DON'T MUCH CARE HOW HE GOT THERE. HE JUST GOT THERE. AND THAT'S FINE BY ME. [APPLAUSE] I ALSO KNOW HE IS NOT THEM. I ALSO KNOW HE LOVES THIS COUNTRY, I ALSO KNOW HE BELIEVES IN OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM. I ALSO KNOW HE BELIEVES IN SOVEREIGNTY AND BORDER COUNTRY. I ALSO KNOW HOW HE TREATS ALLIES LIKE ISRAEL, I KNOW THIS IS A MAN bb [APPLAUSE] [CHEERING] HE KNOWS INFANTICIDE WHEN HE HEARS IT AND REJECTS IT. [APPLAUSE] HE HAS PUT MORE bON THE COURTS SINCE RONALD REAGAN. [APPLAUSE] HE'S NOT THEM. AND HE'S BETTER THAN THEM. HE IS ALSO NOT A RHINO. [APPLAUSE] SO HE MIGHT LOSE. BUT, YOU KNOW WHAT, SOMETIMES YOU LOSE AND THEN SOMETIMES YOU PICK UP YOUR PIECES AND WHEN THE NEXT ROUND. I'M VERY IMPRESSED WITH A LOT OF WHAT HE'S DOING. I TRY TO PUT MYSELF IN HIS OWN SHOES. COULD YOU WAKE UP EVERY DAY UNDER THE ATTACKS HE FACES? THREATS AGAINST HIS CHILDREN AND HIS FAMILY AND HIS TAXES AND HIS FINANCES, STATE OF NEW YORK TRYING TO TAKE AFTER HIM. ON AND ON AND ON. THIS IS A VERY REMARKABLE MAN IN MANY WAYS. [APPLAUSE] AND I KNOW SOME PEOPLE WOULD PREFER THAT HE SPOKE DIFFERENTLY. BUT HE TWEETED DIFFERENTLY. THAT HE DID ALL THESE THINGS DIFFERENTLY. I WOULD PREFER IF THE OTHER SIDE SPOKE DIFFERENTLY AND TWEETED DIFFERENTLY AND DIDN'T DO WHAT THEY DO. [APPLAUSE] ALL I KNOW IS, HE GOT ELECTED PRESIDENT AND MITT ROMNEY DID NOT. [CHEERING] AND JOHN McCAIN DID NOT. >> WE ARE NOT DONE YET. I KNOW THERE ARE MORE QUESTIONS. BUT MARK, BEFORE YOU LEAVE, HE BEEN HERE BEFORE WE'VE GIVEN YOU LIKE A REAGAN HAT AND A REAGAN JACKET AND THOSE THINGS, WE ARE NOT GOING TO LET YOU GO. >> I USE THOSE BY THE WAY. >> I KNOW YOU DO. MARK HAS A STUDIO CALLED THE REAGAN STUDIO AND IT'S FILLED WITH SOME EXTRAORDINARY THINGS AND I WAS TRYING TO THINK, WHAT CAN WE GIVE TO MARK AS A GIFT FOR COMING ALL THE WAY OUT HERE AND WE DECIDED. >> OH. >>. [LAUGHTER] >> IF YOU COULD UNCOVER THAT. THERE IS A STATUE. >> WOW. [CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] >> WHEN YOU VISIT THE UNITED STATES CAPITAL AND YOU GO INTO THE GREAT ROTUNDA YOU WILL SEE THIS STATUE OF RONALD REAGAN THAT'S GOING TO STAND THERE FOR THEIR THOUSAND YEARS. THIS IS A REPLICA OF THAT AND ON IT IT SAYS " TO MARK LEVIN, A TRUE AMERICAN. " THANK YOU MARK. >> THANK YOU, THAT'S BEAUTIFUL. >> THERE ARE NOT MANY OF THOSE. >> NO, THANK YOU. [CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] I DON'T KNOW IF TSA IS GOING TO LET ME BRING THAT ON THE PLANE. [LAUGHTER] THIS IS A MAGNIFICENT INSTITUTION. THIS IS A GREAT LIBRARY. I LOVE COMING HERE. THE HISTORY OF RONALD REAGAN IS SO CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT, HE TURNED THIS COUNTRY AROUND. HE DEFEATED THE SOVIET UNION. HE DID SO MANY THINGS THAT YOUNG PEOPLE NEED TO LEARN ABOUT SO IT IS A TREAT FOR MY FAMILY AND ME AND MY FRIENDS TO BE HERE. I CAN'T TELL YOU, JOHN HI BUSH IS ABSOLUTELY THE MOST FANTASTIC FRIEND. [APPLAUSE] AND MELISSA AND HIS STAFF ARE ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS. BUT I WANT TO TELL YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART, TO SIT THERE AND BOOKS AND SEE ONE BEAUTIFUL PATRIOT AND AMERICAN AFTER THE OTHER, FROM EVERY WALK OF LIFE, FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, LOOK AROUND, EVERY PIGMENTATION, GAY, STRAIGHT, CHILDREN, 91-YEAR-OLD, 97-YEAR-OLD PEOPLE WHO HAVE SERVED IN THE WAR AND PEOPLE WHO BEEN IN LAW ENFORCEMENT, I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW PROUD I AM WHEN YOU COME TO A PLACE LIKE THIS FOR ONE OF OUR NATIONAL TOWN HALL MEETINGS TO REINVIGORATE OURSELVES, THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO SHARE YOUR VIEWPOINTS WHO CARE ABOUT THIS COUNTRY AND SORRY WE HAVE TO MOVE QUICKLY BUT I TRY TO LOOK EVERY PERSON IN THE EYE AND TRY TO SHAKE EVERY PERSON TO DO THE BEST I CAN. [APPLAUSE] THE TO HAVE MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE BY MY SIDE, MY MOTHER-IN-LAW BY MY SIDE. [APPLAUSE] I WANT YOU TO KNOW SOMETHING, SOMETHING IS GOING ON IN THE SHOP I WAS IN NEW JERSEY 2000 PEOPLE SHOWED UP. I WAS ON LONG ISLAND, 2000 PEOPLE SHOWED UP. I WAS IN TYSONS CORNER VIRGINIA, 3000 PEOPLE SHOWED UP. AND ALL SAYING EXACTLY THE SAME THING YOU ARE, SOMETHING IS GOING ON. THERE IS ENOUGH OF US, WE SHALL OVERCOME. GOD BLESS YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. [CHEERING] [APPLAUSE] >> LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE ASK THAT YOU RESPECTIVELY REMAIN IN YOUR SEATS AND TELL THE LEVIN FAMILY HAS BEEN ESCORTED OUT. PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR  Show Less Text

*This transcript was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.

==

Mark Levin lauds Fox News opinion shows for attacking the Mueller probe

3/19

• Sean Hannity even said that parents are in hospitals killing babies in gladiator-style entertainment. Needless to say, that is not happening.
• Death panels are back!The previous lie of the year about the Affordable Care Act has returned, with Fox host Mark Levin suggesting that "Medicare-for-all" will lead to senior citizens being murdered.
• A Fox contributor is arguing that "Medicare-for-all" would be communists

==

dark $ mayer:

AFP hired LLF Mark levin (radio deal // beck) sez Mann can not do stats, “enviro-statists” 222 govt power grab.

==

 Friday, October 12, the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City invited Proud Boys founder and right-wing media host Gavin McInnes to speak.

On his CRTV show (CRTV is the digital network run by Fox News host Mark Levin), McInnes advocates for revanchist positions: He's called for "a big memorial for all the whites," teamed up with a men's rights activist to attack Black women, talked about how great he thinks the patriarchy is, made disgusting remarks about LGBTQ people, argued that women don't belong in the workplace, and much more. McInnes' written work can best be described as attempting to forge new ways to be racist.

McInnes is also the founder of the Proud Boys. Proud Boys is a self-described “Western chauvinist” men-only fraternal organization. There are two crucial things to understand about the group: Misogyny and violence. Misogyny is the core operating principle of the group: Not only are women not allowed to join, they are not even allowed to be present when meetings take place. The group even has a ritual where members subject themselves to punches while naming breakfast cereals. To reach the inner sanctum of the group, a Proud Boy must engage in violence with anti-fascists. The group also has ties to white supremacists; the chief organizer of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville was a Proud Boy, and when a white nationalist narrative goes viral, there's usually a link to the Proud Boys. In terms of finding members, Proud Boys has used Facebook and Infowars to recruit. If you had to sum up the Proud Boys, it would be to describe them as a pro-Trump street gang, the violent wing of the modern Republican Party.

After the event, Proud Boys assaulted three protesters; video shows "more than a dozen" Proud Boys, including at least three skinheads, punching and kicking protesters on the ground. The NYPD told Buzzfeed News that they were still "researching a response" as to why none of the Proud Boys were arrested even though there were officers on the scene. Video from the scene is horrifying.

As the beatdown happened, Fox News immediately put the blame onto left-wing protesters and portrayed the Proud Boys as the victims. There is no evidence whatsoever for that conclusion, and to the contrary, while Fox News warned of "swords and vandalism" at the event, the only sword was wielded by McInnes himself -- the event was to commemorate and reenact the execution of the Japanese socialist Inejiro Asanuma.

While shocking, Fox News' protection of the Proud Boys should come as no surprise. Fox News is explicitly deferential to the Proud Boys. They've interviewed McInnes on air without even identifying him.Tucker Carlson has posed for pictureswith Proud Boys and refused to distance himself from the group, and in fact has even echoed some of McInnes' rhetoric. A New York Post columnist recently arguedon Fox & Friends that the Proud Boys "don't have any real dark beliefs."

But it's not just right-wing media that gets the Proud Boys wrong. NBC News profiledthe Proud Boys in 2017 and made a series of mistakes, in the end only glamorizing the group. A New York Times headline about the melee merely labelled McInnes a "right-wing provocateur."

Trump has repeatedly incited violence at his rallies. Of course a pro-Trump group would take that call to action to the streets.

Amidst right-wing violence, conservatives complain about angry left-wing mob

==

https://www.wnd.com/2017/03/mark-steyn-responds-to-firing-by-crtv/

bs

no lnx

WND EXCLUSIVE

MARK STEYN RESPONDS TO FIRING BY CRTV

Conservative star let go after 1 month on new network

Published: 03/05/2017 at 4:15 PM

There are strange goings on at CRTV, the new “conservative” online television network built largely around the personality of talk-show host Mark Levin.

A new show by Canadian conservative writer and talker Mark Steyn launched only a month ago has been summarily dropped without explanation, leaving Steyn bewildered.

“This has been a stunning and sobering week for me, with nothing quite like it before in my professional life,” he mused on his website this weekend. “Many viewers of ‘The Mark Steyn Show’ have asked me to write my account of what really happened. To be honest, I’ve found it easier addressing Trump’s joint address and the Obamas’ book deal and immigrant terrorists and immigrant gangs and almost any other subject – which is why I’ll be back on the telly next week, rather than sitting around the house getting slumped in despair.”

Steyn went on to say he has not fully processed what happened and it’s a matter of legal dispute.

Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.

Earlier last week, Steyn tweeted that neither he nor his production firm had been paid byConservative Review, the business that owns CRTV.

“CRTV’s contract with Mark Steyn Enterprises has ended, and we will no longer be carrying the Mark Steyn Show,” a statement for Conservative Review reads. “CRTV wishes Mr. Steyn and his team the best in their future endeavors.”

But that’s not how Steyn sees it.

Find Out More >

65,727

“Actually, the contract is up on June 30th 2021. So @CRTV gave me 4 1/2 yrs notice,” he tweeted. “(But no severance.)”

The cancellation of the program was made at the behest of Cary Katz, CRTV’s principal investor and founder of the company. He’s a bit of a mystery man inside conservative circles, until recently supporting mostly establishment Republicans.

Katz built his fortune as founder of College Lending Corp., a private company that specializes in marketing loans to university students. It lent nearly $11 billion in 2008 but took a big hit thereafter with the advent of Obamacare, which abolished private-sector distribution of federal loan monies.

For his role in the venture, Levin was an adamant “Never-Trumper” during much of the 2016 campaign – along with Glenn Beck, whose fortunes have waned, at least in part, because of the strong “against-the-grain” approach on his radio show.

also politico

If you’re a regular listener of Glenn Beck’s radio show and you wanted to contribute to a political group that would advance the populist conservative ideals he touts on his show, you’d have plenty of reason to think that FreedomWorks was your best investment.

But if you’re a fan of Mark Levin’s radio show, you’d have just as much cause to believe that Americans for Prosperity, a FreedomWorks rival, was the most effective conservative advocacy group. And, if Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity are who you listen to, you’d be hearing a steady stream of entreaties to support the important work of the Heritage Foundation.

“The point that people don’t realize,” said Michael Harrison, founder and publisher of the talk media trade publication TALKERS Magazine, “is that(big time political talk show hosts) are radio personalities – they are in the same business that people like Casey Kasem are in – and what they do is no different than people who broadcast from used car lots or restaurants or who endorse the local roofer or gardener.”That’s not coincidence. In search of donations and influence, the three prominent conservative groups are paying hefty sponsorship fees to the popular talk show hosts. Those fees buy them a variety of promotional tie-ins, as well as regular on-air plugs – praising or sometimes defending the groups, while urging listeners to donate – often woven seamlessly into programming in ways that do not seem like paid advertising.

The Heritage Foundation pays about $2 million to sponsor Limbaugh’s show and about $1.3 million to do the same with Hannity’s – and considers it money well spent.

“We approach it the way anyone approaches advertising: where is our audience that wants to buy what you sell?” Genevieve Wood, Heritage’s vice president for operations and marketing. “And their audiences obviously fit that model for us. They promote conservative ideas and that’s what we do.”

Last month, in the midst of a flurry of scrutiny of GOP presidential candidates’ stances on health insurance mandates similar to one included in the 2010 Democratic healthcare overhaul, Limbaugh took to the airwaves to defend Heritage’s past support for such a proposal.

“The Heritage Foundation to this day says they are being impugned and misrepresented in terms of their advocacy for such a thing,” Limbaugh said, explaining that the venerable think tank “abandoned the idea once they saw it implemented” and realized “it doesn’t work.”

Limbaugh, who has been a paid Heritage endorser since 2009, said the reversal did nothing to detract from the “profound … respect for Heritage. Heritage is the gold standard. Heritage was every bit as involved in Reaganism as Reagan was, and nothing’s changed.”

Levin,whose endorsement deal with the tea party organizing group Americans for Prosperitystarted last summer, was similarly protective of his sponsor last year after President Barack Obama singled out the group in making the case that anonymously funded attack ads were distorting the midterm elections.

“Americans for Prosperity is a magnificent organization that people join voluntarily. You. Me,” Levin said. Obama, Levin continued, “wants you to hate Americans for Prosperity. So if he wants you to hate it, then you should embrace it, and promote it, and support it and join it, because it’s effective.”

==

...Beck, lavishing praise on FreedomWorks’s new social network website this year, seemed to acknowledge the blurriness of the line between his show’s content and messages paid for by advertisers.

“This is a new thing from FreedomWorks and by the way, they are sponsor of this program and I have a commercial to do for them in, well, in just a few minutes. I don’t think they’re going to get one because this is pretty much it,” he said on his show, in a clip that’s posted on his personal website. “But it is something that I believe in, I’m not saying this because they’re paying me to do a commercial in a couple of minutes. This is something that I think is absolutely critical.”

To be sure, the hosts’ political perspectives dovetail with those of their endorsees and their paid sponsorships do not preclude them from discussing – or even praising – other groups.

And theintegration of sponsors and their causes into the content of conservative talkers’ shows is not unique to advocacy groups and think tanks, as Beck demonstrated in 2009 when he melded his frequent warnings of impending economic collapse with his promotion of gold, generally, and the precious metals retailer that sponsored his show, Goldline, specifically.

That prompted liberals – led by now-embattled Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner – to accuse Beck and, to a lesser extent, other conservative talk show hosts sponsored by gold retailers, of using misleading fear-mongering tactics “to cheat consumers.”

The increased willingness of non-profits to write big checks for such radio endorsements – which appears to have started in 2008, when Heritage paid $1.2 million to sponsor the talk shows hosted by Hannity and Laura Ingraham – seems to be a primarily, if not entirely, a conservative phenomenon.

That’s perhaps attributable to the enduring power of talk radio on the right, as well as a newer development, the explosion of grassroots engagement by tea partiers and other newly mobilized Republican activists, which has spurred a competition for grass roots support – and contributions - among conservative groups.

Heritage estimates that it in each of the past two years, its sponsorships with Limbaugh and Hannity brought in more than 40,000 new memberships starting at the $25 level, while FreedomWorks said that in the three months after its Beck sponsorship started in April 2010, the group saw a huge spike in traffic to its website (which featured a photo of Beck linked to a fundraising appeal), resulting in 50,000 new email sign-ups.

Americans for Prosperity wouldn’t divulge any details about its sponsorship of Levin,but board member Art Pope said the endorsement “makes AfP’s position on issues and policies more widely known and it also does attract grassroots activists or potential donors to AfP.”

The groups pay the companies that distribute the hosts’ shows, and not the hosts directly, for the endorsements.

While the deals differ, most provide the sponsoring group a certain number of messages or so called “live-reads,” in which the host will use a script, outline or set of talking points to deliver an advertisement touting the group and encouraging listeners to visit its website or contribute to it.

==

Abramoff's Favorite Think Tank Schools Tea Partiers on Health Care

— By Stephanie Mencimer

Far right Conservatism has become a cult, and Rush Limbaugh is its leader.

By definition, a cult is a group or sect bound together by adoration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.

A cult promises you redemption. It tells you that if you do what it says, and as it believes, you will be protected from the evil people that are out to get you and the rest of society.

A cult purges the non-believers. And it actively tries to vilify all those who are not part of the cult, saying that they're doomed and destined to go to hell.

So how did Limbaugh become the leader of such a large, and influential, cult?

Like with any cult, the power that Limbaugh has over his flock as grown over time.

Right wing radio started out in conflict with mainstream society, and outside of mainstream politics.

What was once a little cult guided by Limbaugh has transformed into a massive cult that today has enveloped much of the Conservative movement.

So how did this transformation occur?

Well, like cult leaders do, Limbaugh offered up a theatrical flair, and accompanied that with a marketing genius.

He offered his followers redemption. He offered them protection from what he told them they should fear – liberals and feminists. He demanded ideological purity, and absolute devotion to the ideology of far-right "conservative" corporatism. And he vilified all those who didn't see things his way.

Limbaugh then managed to convince his followers that faith in his word was more important than facts. No matter what everyone else said, if Rush said it, it must be true. Only information that supports Limbaugh's positions can be believed, and everything else is just lies.

Since his first successes, he's been followed by a succession of other right-wing cult leaders, from Glenn Beck to Mark Levin to Alex Jones.

Which brings us to today.

Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing talk radio cult have conjured up such a large following that they're helping the Koch Brothers drive the polarization within the Republican Party, and within America's political discourse.

Ironically, so says Frank Luntz, a top Republican consultant and campaign guru.

Earlier this week, Luntz told a group of college students at the University of Pennsylvania that Limbaugh and his fellow right-wing talk-radio cult leaders are "problematic" for the Republican Party because they're responsible for the stark polarization within the party.

In a secret recording of his comments, Luntz can be heard saying that, "And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it's really problematic. And this is not on the Democratic side. It's only on the Republican side...[inaudible]. [Democrats have] got every other source of news on their side. And so that is a lot of what's driving it. If you take—Marco Rubio's getting his ass kicked. Who's my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He's getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He's trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn't the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him. That's what's causing this thing underneath. And too many politicians in Washington are playing coy."

Basically, Luntz was saying that the right-wing media and its cult following are not serving the national political debate and not helping the Republican Party widen its appeal beyond its declining base of aging boomer cultists.

But no matter what Luntz says, Limbaugh and the rest of his right-wing media pals will continue to rally their followers, and continue to vilify those who dare think otherwise.

They will continue to paint President Obama as America's anti-hero, using terms like "socialist" and "Muslim" to further scare their cult followers into seeing things their way.

The good news is that there are still some semblances of a normal, and non-cult media in America.

Unlike the right-wing media, real media – and even progressive media – is not cult-like. It talks about ideas that are widely accepted (social safety net, clean environment, nondiscrimination, a solid middle class), and that are not in conflict with the rest of society.

It's not based on fear or faith. It's based on facts. And it respects other beliefs and ideas, instead of vilifying them.

And perhaps, most importantly, real media doesn't fear or hate our government, and certainly doesn't suggest we should be armed and ready to attack our own government.

Sadly, that cult is coming dangerously close to having complete control over the Republican Party and much of the political discourse in our country.

Thankfully, people are waking up and recognizing the far right-wing media for what it is: a cult.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/mark-levin

http://mediamatters.org/tags/mark-levin

Fair And Balanced? Fox News' Hour-Long Attack On Obama's "Green Agenda"

Blog››› October 8, 2012 5:55 PM EDT ››› JILL FITZSIMMONS 

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/10/08/fair-and-balanced-fox-news-hour-long-attack-on/190458

...That’s the debate that broke out across the conservative movement last week when Politico revealed that the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), the right wing group targeting establishment Republican senators, had spent $427,000 to buy copies of Mark Levin’s four-year-old book Liberty or Tyrannyto distribute to donors. Not surprisingly, Levin is a big supporter of candidates backed by the SCF like Matt Bevin, the Tea Party challenger to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The article in and of itself didn’t cause a furor. What did raise a ruckus was when Brad Dayspring, the spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)tweeted it out, saying “WHOA! Senate Conservatives Fund spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make Mark Levin’s book a bestseller.” That tweet created a political tempest

===http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/mark-levin

=== 

http://en.:{wikipedia:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.org/wiki/Mark_Levin

Mark Reed Levin (born September 21, 1957) is an American radio host, lawyer, author, and political commentator who served in the Reagan administration. He is the host of The Mark Levin Show which, in the U.S, is a nationally-syndicated talk show, and he is President of the :{Landmark Legal Foundation:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:. He has authored bestselling books and contributed to various media outlets. As of October 2009, Levin was listed as a Contributing Editor on the *National Review Online* website.^{[^^1]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-0)

[edit] Biography

Mark R. Levin grew up in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Levin graduated from Cheltenham High School and holds a B.A. from Temple University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and *magna cum laude*. Levin also earned a Juris Doctor from Temple University Beasley School of Law.

Beginning in 1981, Levin served as advisor to several members of President Ronald Reagan's Cabinet, eventually becoming Associate Director of Presidential Personnel and ultimately Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese; Levin also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

He has practiced law in the private sector, and is president of Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm founded in 1976 and based in Leesburg, Virginia.

Levin has participated in the Freedom Concerts, an annual benefit concert to aid the families of fallen soldiers, and he uses his radio program to promote the concerts.^{[^^2]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-1)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-2)^{3]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-2) Levin is also involved with Troopathon, a charity which sends care packages to soldiers serving overseas.^{[^^4]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-3)

In 2001, the American Conservative Union awarded Levin its Ronald Reagan Award.^{[^^5]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-4)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-5)^{6]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-5)

[edit] Radio broadcasting

Levin began his broadcast career as a guest on conservative talk radio programs. For many years he was a frequent contributor of legal opinions to *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, where Limbaugh referred to him on-air as "F. Lee Levin," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. He was also a contributor to *The Sean Hannity Show* and eventually got a radio slot of his own on WABC, following Sean Hannity's program. Hannity has nicknamed Mark Levin "The Great One."^{[^^7]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-6) Levin and Hannity remain frequent contributors to each other's programs.

[edit] The Mark Levin Show

Levin began his radio hosting career in 2002 as a Sunday afternoon host on WABC. His radio show, a mix of political and social commentary from a conservative point of view, covers legal issues in some detail, including decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Levin follows the traditional talk radio model of taking listener calls throughout the show. In the fall of 2003, his show filled the 6-8 p.m. (ET) time slot. As of February 2, 2009, his show was expanded to three hours, namely, 6-9 p.m.^{[^^8]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-bystorm-7)

As of 2006, his show is syndicated by Citadel Media (formerly known as ABC Radio Networks) on over 150 stations and the SIRIUS XM Patriot channel. Levin's show has been rated number one in its time slot in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas – Fort Worth and Washington, D.C..^{[^^8]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-bystorm-7) According to *Talkers Magazine*, The Mark Levin Show is one of the most-listened to radio talk shows, with more than 8.5 million listeners weekly.^{[^^9]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-talkers2010-8)

Levin's show has garnered some criticism, including from *New York Times* columnist David Brooks and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, for being too aggressive and negative in his analysis.^{[^^10]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-Frum1-9)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-Frum2-10)^{11]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-Frum2-10)

Levin is known for punning the names of liberal politicians and liberal newspapers. Such puns include "Anthony's Weiner" for Rep. Anthony Weiner and the "Washington Compost" for the *Washington Post*.

[edit] Writer

[edit] Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto^{[^^12]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-11) was released on March 24, 2009, and became a No. 1 New York Times best seller for eleven of twelve weeks,^{[^^13]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-12) as well as No. 1 on Nielsen's BookScan.^{[^^14]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-13) It comes in at No. 2 on Amazon.com's list of bestselling books of 2009.^{[^^15]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-14) The book includes discussion of a variety of issues that, according to Levin, need to be addressed in the United States. Liberty and Tyranny has sold over one million copies according to Threshold Editions, the book's publisher.^{[^^16]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-HumanEvents1-15) Former federal prosecutor and fellow National Review Online author Andrew C. McCarthy wrote of Liberty and Tyranny in *The New Criterion*:

We are in the high tide of America’s Leftist ascendancy: the Obama evisceration of individual freedom and installation of authoritarian collectivism—at warp speed, driven by an ambition that would have made Woodrow Wilson and FDR blush. Against this tidal wave, Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack, a clarion call to roll back the seas of Change.^{[^^17]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-NewCriterionMcCarthy-16)

Taking a contrary view, Steve Almond of *Salon* wrote that

the tantalizing beauty of a Mark Levin's text resides precisely in this ability to attribute any crisis of State to its nefarious indulgences. The current economic meltdown, for instance, should not be blamed on the psychotic greed of Wall Street, but on the State's deranged need to throw money at the poor and undeserving.^{[^^18]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-SalonAlmond-17)

[edit] Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish

In 2007, Levin released a book about his dogs, Pepsi and Sprite. Specifically, the book was about Sprite, a Spaniel mix that his wife and son persuaded him to adopt from the local shelter in 2004. The book was titled Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish^{[^^19]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-18). Rescuing Sprite chronicles Sprite’s health deterioration in 2006 and how Levin and his family dealt with their loss.

[edit] Men In Black: How The Supreme Court is Destroying America

Levin authored the bestselling book, Men In Black: How The Supreme Court Is Destroying America^{[^^20]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-19) in 2005, in which Levin advanced his thesis that activist judges on the Supreme Court (from all parts of the political spectrum) have "legislated from the bench." In her review of Men in Black^{[^^21]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-20), *Slate* magazine's legal correspondent and Canadian journalist Dahlia Lithwick wrote that "no serious scholar of the court or the Constitution, on the ideological left or right, is going to waste their time engaging Levin's arguments once they've read this book." In contrast, a review in the *Defense Counsel Journal* described Men in Black as “…a forceful indictment of what Levin identifies as an increasingly 'activist' court for amending our national Constitution in the guise of construing it.” ^{[^^22]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_note-21)

[edit] References

1. **^** "Mark R. Leving Archive on the National Review Online". http://author.nationalreview.com/?q=MjQyMg==. Retrieved 2009-10-22. ^[dead ^link]
2. **^** "Sean Hannity, Freedom Concert comes to Nokia Theatre". http://www.thechronicleonline.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=572&Itemid=348. ^[dead ^link]
3. **^** "Montgomery Gentry loves country and sings for "Freedom"". New York Daily News. 2007-09-11. http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2007/09/11/2007-09-11_montgomery_gentry_loves_country_and_sing.html. Retrieved 2009-12-04. 
4. **^** "Troopathon Homepage". Move America Forward. http://www.troopathon.org/index.php. Retrieved 2009-12-04. 
5. **^** "CPAC Pleased to Present Annual Reagan Award". The American Conservative Union. http://www.conservative.org/pressroom/2008/080220pr.asp. Retrieved 2009-12-04. ^[dead ^link]
6. **^** "Ronald Reagan Award Presented to Landmark's President Mark Levin". Landmark Legal Foundation. http://www.landmarklegal.org/DesktopFrame.aspx?frame=LONGTEXT&itemid=375. Retrieved 2009-12-04. 
7. **^** Mark Levin Retrieved 2010-08-28.
8. ^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_ref-bystorm_7-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin#cite_ref-bystorm_7-1) Jeffrey, Terence; Allan Ryskind (2006-10-02). "Mark Levin Takes Talk Radio by Storm". Human Events. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200610/ai_n17193209. Retrieved 2007-09-16. 
9. **^** "The Top Talk Radio Audiences". Talkers magazine. September 2010. http://talkers.com/online/?p=71. Retrieved 2010-09-14. 
10. **^** Frum, David (2009-08-13). "The Reckless Right Courts Violence; Hysterical Talk from TV and Radio Hosts May Be a Cynical Marketing Exercise. But It's Getting Too Dangerous to Ignore". The Week. http://www.theweek.com/bullpen/column/99474/The_reckless_Right_courts_violence. Retrieved 2009-10-17. 
11. **^** Frum, David (2009-03-07). "Why Rush is Wrong: The party of Buckley and Reagan is now bereft and dominated by the politics of Limbaugh. A conservative's lament.". *Newsweek*. http://www.newsweek.com/id/188279. Retrieved 2009-10-17. 
12. **^** ISBN 1-41656-285-0
13. **^** "Hardcover Nonfiction". The New York Times. 2009-06-21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/books/bestseller/besthardnonfiction.html?ref=bestseller.:{ }:
14. **^** Nielsens Bookscan *Liberty and Tyranny*, April 9, 2009
15. **^** Amazon.com
16. **^** Vivian, Jordan (2009-09-15). "*Liberty and Tyranny* Sells a Million". *Human Events*. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33558. Retrieved 2009-09-21. 
17. **^** McCarthy, Andrew (2009-05). "The Work of Generations". *New Criterion*. http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-work-of-generations-4086. Retrieved 2009-10-08. 
18. **^** Almond, Steve (2009-09-12). "Glenn Beck is the future of literary fiction". *Salon.com*. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2009/09/12/rightwing_bestsellers/print.html. Retrieved 2009-09-24. 
19. **^** ISBN 1-41655-913-2.
20. **^** ISBN 0-89526-050-6
21. **^** Dahlia Lithwick, "The Limbaugh Code: The *New York Times* best seller no one is talking about.", *Slate*, April 1, 2005
22. **^** "*Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America*", Defense Counsel Journal , January 1, 2006.

[edit] External links

• Mark Levin Show, The Official Mark Levin Website
• marklevinshow Twitter feed
• The Official Mark Levin Show Audio Rewind
• Landmark Legal Foundation
• Mark Levin is on the air from NationalReview.com

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levin"

Categories: American broadcast news analysts | American columnists | American Jews | American political pundits | Pennsylvania lawyers | American political writers | American Spectator people | American talk radio hosts | Conservatism in the United States | National Review people | School board members in the United States | People from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania | Radio programs on XM Radio | Reagan Administration personnel | Temple University alumni | United States Department of Education officials | 1957 births | Living people