May 7th, 2026

Rough transcription of Hour 1

Segment 1
Hello America. Mark Levin here.  Our number, 877-381-3811.  877-381-3811. In hour three, we have two governors, separate appearances at the top of the hour, 8:00pm Eastern, America’s governor, Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida. And at 8:30pm Eastern, we have the great governor of Texas.  He’s fantastic as well, Governor Abbott. And that was the best times that they were available in hour three, so you won’t want to miss that. But there is breaking news right now from CENTCOM.  US Forces intercepted unprovoked Iranian attacks and responded with self defense strikes as US Navy guided missile destroyers transited the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Oman on May 7th.  That’s today.  Iranian forces launched multiple missiles, drones and small boats as USS Truxton, USS Rafael Peralta and USS Mason transited the international sea passage. No U.S. assets were struck. U.S. central Command, CENTCOM eliminated inbound threats and targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces, including missile and drone launch sites, command and control locations, and intel surveillance and reconnaissance nodes. CENTCOM does not seek escalation, but remains positioned and ready to protect American forces. There’s also some reports that tonight the UAE has sent its air force to attack Iranian sites. Uh, and you can see online, uh, some of that activity taking place now. What bothers me about the CENTCOM release is these are defensive actions and we don’t seek to escalate. To me, when you put out a statement like that, just to me, you’re sending the wrong message. You’re sending the wrong message to the enemy. You’re sending the wrong message to the Arab allies. You’re sending the wrong message to our allies, the Israelis, that we will only strike if struck. We will only attack if attacked. We are not going to get this over with and we are not going to have a clear victory unless we finish them off. And I have talked about this now since this war began and even before. Militarily, economically and in the interior of Iran. Arm the resistance.  Determine what group or groups to help and to arm.  Target the IRGC. Target the internal security forces. The regular army in Iran is not the Iranian Guard. The regular army in Iran is a real army, but it’s not part of the personalized ideological military wing of the Islamo Nazi regime. It is a regular army, not as well trained, not as well equipped, and as it turns out, not getting paid very well lately either. And so the goal is, the goal is to encourage, not through talk, not through messages, the army to Basically drop gun and run or to turn on the internal security forces and others. But none of this is going to happen, in my opinion, if we do not get arms to the resistance in Iran. And I can think of no other circumstance and environment where this would work any better. We did this in Afghanistan, we did it in Nicaragua, we did it in Angola, we did it in Honduras. We have done it in many places during the Reagan administration when the CIA director was the great Bill Casey. I’m starting to wonder if our CIA is up to this. Maybe they’re risk averse, maybe the bureaucrats have taken over, I don’t know. But to leave the third leg of an effective campaign to destroy that regime essentially dormant to the best of my knowledge, maybe it’s not. But I think it is, or at least semi is, is worrisome to me. By the way, I’m not criticizing anything. I’m just explaining my thoughts. That’s what I do. And what do I mean that the environment there, the circumstances there are better than Most? You have 92 million people there. 80% of them want nothing to do with this regime. They’ve died by the tens of thousands. 50,000 died in January. In two days they have sped up executions, they’re executing more people than ever before, mostly young people. They’re tightening their grip on the society. They’ve cut off all communications and now they’re able to track if there’s even efforts in various homes and other facilities to make communications. Because they know that in order to survive they must continue to kill, torture, imprison or they won’t survive. And so they are not just looking over their shoulders. They have turned around and they are attacking their people. Liberating those people is crucially important for them, obviously, and for us.  And for us, We should make maximum use of every one of our options here. And once they’re supported and armed, our military and the Israeli military should back them up. When they hit a building, when they hit a unit, when they hit what they need to hit, they are backed up by our air power.  Again, we have done this before. Do we have the will to do it now? I don’t know what the CIA is telling the President. I’m concerned that he’s being told that it’s farcical or that the people won’t rise up.  And of course that would be a horrible misjudgment. Historically horrible.  And for those who say we need an exit strategy or an exit ramp, first of all, I’m m sick of these phrases that get created and then regurgitated as if they mean something. There is no exit ramp.  Should we surrender? That’s the advice of Piers Morgan. Get out of there. Of course he’s a moron.  What does he know?  He’s not the only one. He’s not the only one. Many the same crowd, the same radical isolationists who’ve been trying to sabotage this war effort with their propaganda. And they know it’s heard by the enemy and they know they’re dispiriting some sector of the American public, but they keep it up. They pretend we’re losing. Losing what? Are they nuts? But most of them hate Trump.  They didn’t hate him before, they hate him now.  Or they kept it quiet. But now they’re out of the closet. They’re fully exposed.  And it’s very ugly. Very ugly. What the President has done here is historic. It’s taken a lot of courage.  And we’re only in this position to finish them off because he brought us to this point with our military and economically.  And despite what the half wits and the nitwits, despite what the radical isolationists woke Reich neo fascists have to say, despite what the Democrats and the Marxists and the Islamists have to say as they all regurgitate the enemy’s propaganda, as they all interview each other.  This has been a spectacular military and economic success up till now. What will determine whether it continues to be so is how this ends. It can be a glorious victory or a historic mistake. I have a lot of faith in our President. I have a lot of faith that he knows this.  I also have a lot of faith in the enemy that they’re so ideologically, Ideologically stuck that they’re. There’s such a dire death cult that they don’t know how to say no, let me reverse that. They don’t know how to say yes. Yes.  My.  My view is simple. They surrender or they die. I’ll be right back.

Segment 2
A tremendous Life Liberty and Levin Saturday and Sunday, 8pm Eastern. I hope you’ll set your DVR, especially Sunday, because it’s Mother’s Day Sunday and we all celebrate that. If you don’t know if you’ll be home in time, you know, you want to set your dvr, you don’t want to miss it. And, um, let’s see, Saturday we have Rebecca Henricks, who is absolute Heinrichs, excuse me, is absolutely wonderful from the Hudson Institute and Christopher Ruffo who’s going to get into care their terrorism and how they’re being funded by your federal tax dollars through Governor Newscomb. And Sunday’s show again, it’s Mother’s Day, so you may definitely want to set your dvr. We’re going to have the great Newt Gingrich, who’s been absent for a little while overseas, and the great retired four star general Jack Keane.  So we got two fantastic shows awaiting your eyes and ears just for you.  And we have our brand new Liberty’s Voice video podcast up right now at rumble and YouTube. We had a little slow start getting it up there, but it’s up there now. I hope you’ll check it out. Get into these issues of what’s freedom, what’s tyranny? How are we doing as a country? 250th anniversary, the declaration. What do we need to do? What are we up against? And I make reference to a book you may have heard of that came out in 2009 called Liberty and Tyranny, the number one conservative book in the generation, which came out simultaneously with the Tea Party movement. So we’ll get into all these things.  A lot going on.  A lot going on right here, right now on this show. Sea to shining sea in our three, we have Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott. Governor DeSantis will talk about the change in the congressional seats in Florida, among other things. And Governor Abbott, we’re going to talk about CAIR and uh, this lawsuit that he has going and how this may finally expose CAIR for what it is. And, uh, I just think there’s a lot of good things going on as well as a lot of challenging and dark things going on. So I’m here to try and sort them through with you. Here we are, my favorite platform radio in our national town hall meeting.  This is what we do. Liberty’s Voice today, among other things. Here’s a couple clips.  Cut.  One, go. The number one selling conservative book in a generation was this one, Liberty and Tyranny. I wrote it in 2008, 18 years ago. It was published in 2009, 17 years ago. And the world has changed enormously since then.  Do we even talk about conservative principles anymore?  This book sold 1.5 million copies. And I remember my father, God bless his soul, I sent him the final draft that I was sending into the publisher. I asked him to take a look at it for me. And I didn’t hear from him for a whole week. That wasn’t the way we usually communicated. And then he called me and he said that that is a killer book. You’ve got a hit. It’s going to sell a million copies. I said, dad, you’re just my dad. He said, no, it lays it all out in plain English. People are going to really enjoy this book. And he was right. And many of you purchased it and read it. Cut to go. These times are very dark times.  They really are.  Do we even discuss conservatism today? I feel like we spend more time discussing other people. Do we even teach conservatism and what that means today? I feel like we’re so busy playing defense, we don’t. Now, uh, don’t get me wrong, times are much more extreme and dangerous today than they were when I wrote this book. I think we’re really looking into the abyss here. If we don’t get our act together and if we don’t get a ruling class in place that’s strong enough and has the will to push back. And so I think my goal, my purpose is to help rally the troops, rally Americans to the cause. And this is why I’m live again, obviously. This is why I believe we have to have a solid victory with Iran. The sooner the better. The ceasefire that’s gone on what, four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, whatever it is, I don’t think is helpful to getting this resolved and over with. Victory. The American people like winners. The American people like victory. The politics in the polls will follow. The gas prices will go down.  That will follow.  Victory has many virtues, including the elimination of a regime that we don’t have to worry about anymore. We’ve got to win these midterm elections.  We got people who are out there who tell you the only way to win is basically to surrender to the Iranians. The only way to win is to embrace the Marxist Islamists. You’ve got some of them now who are talking up Democrats. Ignore these people. Conservative talk radio, my show on Fox and others, certain podcasters.  We know what we’re talking about. I’ll be right back.

Segment 3
Welcome back, folks.  Lots going on. Um, I’m trying to keep track of this. I don’t have first hand information, but it does look like good information. Like the UAE was hit potentially by the Iranians. Potentially by the Iranians. Um, I’ve been impressed with that little country, quite frankly. A lot of spunk, a Lot of pushback. And they’re aligned now with the United States and Israel, there’s no question about it. And Israel has been providing them with air, uh, defense systems and has been using, to some extent, its air force to try and protect that country. See, the potential here for taking out that regime is truly, truly the spreading of peace in the Middle east in ways we could never contemplate before. War has a funny way of resetting the table, of changing things, and it can make a big difference. Here’s Ambassador Mike waltz at the UN today. I’m a big fan of this guy. Cut 3 go where it seeks to demand that all ship captains from international shipping, commercial shipping, civilian shipping, basically have to check in and pay a bribe, pay a toll in order to use these international waterways. So that doesn’t just affect this region, it affects the entire world. Imagine, imagine if we had countries, regardless of the conflict, regardless of what you think about the conflict or who started what. Imagine if you had two countries, hypothetically, like Spain and Morocco, have some type of dispute, and then throw sea mines into the Straits of the Gibraltar and then start trying to charge shipping to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar in a cynical bid for leverage with the other side. Collective punishment of the entire world to try to resolve some type of dispute. It’s unacceptable, it’s immoral, and it’s illegal in international law. So, uh, this should be a simple demand, the removal of mines from an international waterway that you cannot exact illegal tolls. We have to address these violations here in the Council. And we have to ask ourselves, if a country chooses to oppose such a simple proposition, do they really want peace?  And here’s the thing, ladies and gentlemen. As long as the regime survives, the ideology survives. And the ideology is one of worldwide Islamist revolution. It’s not just about controlling one nation, Iran, it’s about a worldwide conquest. That’s why they fund terrorism. Qatar does too. But Qatar and Iran, even though they’ve been aligned in the past, and they may still be to some extent, there are two different Muslim sects. Sects. And, um, you can’t really contain and manage forever this ideology, this death cult. As long as the regime exists, the regime will be as the regime is. Doesn’t change its spots.  Particularly when you combine a religious fervor with an ideological fervor. People call political Islam something very interesting.  I went back and I started reading the original Comenes comments and what people wrote about him at the time.  He used Marxist populist propaganda and he linked it to this jihadi Islamist revolutionary Government.  So he would talk about the people, the rights of the people, the many versus the few, and in the rich in the west, and the few in the west who really try to control the many. So they used, he used Marxist propaganda and he linked it to the Islamist revolution. Just like the Marxist Communists. They’re not limited to a country within borders. This is an international revolutionary movement. Same with the Islamist. This is why I constantly use the phrase Marxist Islamist, Marxist Islamist, because that’s what we’re dealing with, that’s what’s going on in Iran. And it is an international revolution. They believe and they argue, compelled by Allah, compelled by God. And the only way the 12th Imam will reveal himself is if they take over the world by force or otherwise. They have to conquer the world and eliminate or force everybody to adhere to, to their fundamentalism. Otherwise the 12th Imam, who’s in hiding, will not appear. Once they achieve the purity of the human race, he will appear and there will be peace and prosperity and, you know, flowers blooming in the winter, all kinds of cool stuff. That’s what they believe. Now, you can’t manage that. You can’t contain that for decade after decade after decade. You just can’t. Because when you look at our weakness, the Democrat Party, our weakness, the suicidal isolationists and the growing Marxist Islamist influence in our country, look at New York, for God’s sake. But it’s going on. We will not have the will. We will not have the political will or the psychological will or the unity as a people to fight it, which has been my point. What happens 10 years from now? What happens when Donald Trump leaves the presidency? What if the Democrats take the presidency? You think they are going to enforce any agreement? I don’t care how great the agreement is. What do the framers say about the Constitution? We can give you the best constitution mankind has ever conceived and we have. But if the people lose their virtue, it doesn’t matter, because a parchment can’t, cannot fix a people that do not have virtue. Luckily, a majority of us do. But we are still having to fight, in some cases, play defense. We are up against these very craven forces and it is problematic. The fact of the matter is, in a situation like this, it is very rare in history, very rare to have an enemy like this that it’s on its back, a very, very dangerous enemy. Don’t let anybody persuade you otherwise.  And the window is a very small window. It’s a very small window.  So the question is, will we pursue victory or will we take a step? Will we take a Step short of victory, which means no victory, temporary victory, interim victory. President just posted on Truth Social. 3 World Class American destroyers just transited very successfully out of the Strait of Hormuz under fire. There was no damage done to the three destroyers, but great damage done to the Iranian attackers.  They were completely destroyed, along with numerous small boats which are being used to take the place of their fully decapitated navy. President goes on. These boats went to the bottom of the sea quickly and efficiently. Missiles were shot at our destroyers and were easily knocked down. Likewise, drones came and were incinerated while in the air.  Sounds like lasers to me.  They dropped ever so beautifully down to the ocean, very much like a butterfly dropping to its grave. A normal country would have allowed these destroyers to pass, but Iran is not a normal country. They are led by lunatics. If they had the chance to use a nuclear weapon, they would do it without question. But they’ll never have that opportunity. And just like we knocked them out today, again, we’ll knock them out a lot harder and a lot more violently in the future if they don’t get their deal signed fast.  So we’re back to the deal.  Our three destroyers with their wonderful crews will now rejoin our naval blockade, which is truly a wall of steel.  President Donald Trump, I want to remind you about how wrong the Democrats and the media have been.  They’re always wrong. When Ronald Reagan announced, gave a national speech, the Strategic Defense Initiative sdi, he was mocked. The generals and the scientists who were advising him that this could be done over time, but we needed to apply the resources. They were mocked and so they mocked him by coming up with this Star wars label. Oh, Star wars great. All fiction, all science fiction, all fantasy. And throughout his presidency, at a fight like hell to get funding for the sdi, what would become the Patriot missile defense system and beyond. And Reagan talked about it being like a bullet hitting a bullet, a missile hitting a missile. Again, they went to their phony experts who said, that is not possible. It will never happen. But the man who feared it most was Mikhail Gorbachev. And what he knew was the Soviet Union did not have the resources, did not have the technology, did not have the brain power to keep up with us. And that’s how we got our nuclear deal.  And that’s the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. We can learn from these things, America.  It was Reagan with the great CIA Director Bill Casey, the great Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, the great Secretaries of state first Al Haig than George Shultz, among others, who decided to arm the resistance who we called freedom fighters in our hemisphere, to stop the spread of communism in Africa, to stop the spread of communism in Afghanistan, to take out the Soviet government there and in other places.  And it worked. And it worked. And the CIA today, in my view, needs to step up in this regard. I’m sure it’s doing a fantastic job in other regards, but in this regard. And he can do the same thing for the people of Iran who are chomping at the bit to have an opportunity to overthrow this government. And they can’t overthrow the government with their bare hands.  They tried in January and they lost 50,000 people.  Most of them were their children.  And they tried before when Obama was president, same thing. They were mowed down again. And they tried before that, and they were mowed down again.  Hm.  For God’s sakes, we’re in a position to help them, to arm them and help ourselves at the same time. I’ll be right back.

Segment 4
We’re going to spend some time next hour and really, as much as we can get in before the governors appear in the third hour on Mamdani on the east coast and what’s going on on the west coast as well in that governor’s race and in the race for mayor of, uh, Los Angeles. And it will matter, and it does matter.  And I have said, I announced here yesterday and I’ve repeated it online and I want to repeat it tonight. It’s clear to me that Zohran Mamdani is intentionally creating an environment in New York City that is very hostile to the Jewish community, that is actually violent. Violent. That Jews are being harassed and pushed and beaten on the streets and when they are attending temple with bullhorns and so forth and in Jewish neighborhoods, swastikas and other and other hateful things are going on because the thugs, the Islamists, the neo Nazis, know they can get away with it. They can get away with it. And Mamdani speaks out of both sides of his mouth and he knows exactly what’s taking place. And he’s trying to create an environment to depopulate the city of the Jewish, of the Jewish people. That’s what he’s doing. And I think he wants to make it a permanent center for people of his faith.