August 11th, 2026

Rough transcription of Hour 1

Segment 1
Hello America.  Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811.  877-381-3811. Welcome, America. I just saw this literally minutes ago. From MSN.com. Iran’s rulers are taking steps to keep their economy functioning just enough to resist a drawn out U.S. campaign. Goes on. The U.S. is tightening its squeeze, reimposing a blockade of ports and firing on a ship today that violated it. But the renewed pressure may not be enough to crack Tehran. Iran is becoming a survival economy by rationing scarce goods, limiting access to foreign currency, slashing investment and shifting more of the burden onto the households while preserving strategic imports and the essential machinery of the state. Analysts say. The result will be a deepening economic malaise that leads to rising poverty and dysfunction, but also more room for Iran’s leaders to start talks with the U.S.. This has been my main concern. We just talked about this yesterday a little bit. Now that it is that the. The regime. What has been the resources for itself. And. The Iranian Republican Guard Corps. The IRGC. And I’m reading online, people going, X is great. We’re going to have total victory. This is great. I don’t think they quite get it. I hope people in the administration get it. I clearly see that people on line at a think tanks and. So-called influencers, whereas there are phonies, but also people with websites people are supposed to know commenting. They seem to think this will be enough. It’s not going to be enough. America. Now, when are we going to arm the Iranian people? And why is Cargo Island still functioning? I don’t get it. I honestly don’t. And some day after the fact, maybe years from now, somebody will write about it. And now I’m thinking that this is going to hurt us as we’ve been talking, actually. But I’m thinking that this is going to be the big pull that hurts us during the midterm elections. You can’t. Drag this out this way. It’s a thing that the the woke right neo fascist isolationists who talk about forever wars. Their answer right now. You know what their answer is right now. Declare victory and get out. Declare victory and get out. They think the American people are stupid. They think you’re stupid, Mr. and Mrs. America. They think MAGA and. Constitutional conservatives, they think you’re all stupid, that you’re not going to notice it. Well, of course you’re going to notice. So is communist China. So is communist North Korea. So is Russia. So are all of our enemies. Whoa. Wow. Look at that. But the woke right? Neo fascist isolationists as a group have a very low IQ. They’re not bright. They’re just not. And. Their reaction to this has given aid and comfort to the enemy. Aid and comfort to the enemy. And in my mind, there’s no question about this. There’s simply no question about this. So. Our friend Jack Keane. He’s he’s all over Fox and that’s a good thing. We need him on Fox, meaning him everywhere, really. He was on today with Martha MACCALLUM. I’m a big fan of both of them. Both of them. She’s a real journalist and a very nice person. I want you to listen to this. We’re going to cut sticks, Mr. Producer. Go. It’s very unnerving. I mean, obviously, this president has seen more threats against his life than. All right, I should set this up a little bit. Just hold it right there. They’re talking about reports today that the president went on the the new Air Force One and then went out Another round of the Air Force One was transported to another jet. The old Air Force One or military jet to fly out of Turkey because of a threat from Iran. And the intelligence that was received was mostly through the Israelis, by the way. And so now you had media figures like Jake tapped out and others saying, well, isn’t that outrageous? He left some staff behind and he also left some reporters behind. Now, ladies and gentlemen, look. I get that. I understand it. But when the president of the United States. For instance, at the White House Correspondents Dinner, the first one this past this year, this past couple of months, when they hustled the president and the people at the dais out of the out of the ballroom. There are a lot of people left behind. There were a lot of people left behind. There’s really no way to address that. Certainly when you look at the situation that took place in Turkey, it’s even a harder situation. How do you address that? Because the whole point is to conceal where the president is in a move and to safety onto another plane. And if you start emptying the entire plane, you kind of give it away, don’t you? But then people are saying, but what if it would have blown out? What if it was attack? What if it this went off at that? First of all, we don’t know that the original plane the president wasn’t. Protected in some way. By fighter jets and so forth, We don’t know. So people don’t have the full story on television, and yet they’re making these wild statements. They’re making these wild statements. So that’s what Martha MACCALLUM is talking about. Go ahead, please. President And you said something to me when we spoke the other day that as we get closer to the midterms, Iran will become more violent because they understand the pressure of the midterms, the political pressure that the president and his party face right now. And they’re working it to their advantage. Yeah, well, that’s one of the reasons why the Iranians believe they have the upper hand here. And obviously, they still have influence over the Straits of Hormuz. And and that they acquired that on April the seventh when we went to a cease fire. And we’re four months into it and we’re still trying to work out some kind of a deal here with a strike to stop their movement. Here’s what he’s saying. He’s saying that we were kicking their asses for two weeks, we in the Israelis, and then we slammed on the brakes and went to a so-called cease fire because the president’s adviser and the president apparently believed that we’d done enough damage, that they’d come to the table. And at some point. Say, Uncle. But they didn’t the ceasefire didn’t hold. It was violated repeatedly. And they didn’t say Uncle. They dragged us along so they could rebuild. So they could. Reinforce their. The regime so that they could get weapons from communist China, fascistic Russia. And they did all those things. And as you know, listening to this program, I said, why didn’t. What is that all about? You don’t negotiate with an enemy that’s not defeated. And of course, all the geniuses on the Internet and elsewhere, not just the Internet, were saying. Oh, yes, I remember Rand Paul even saying, Yeah, well, of course we we do not know. We really don’t. We negotiate for surrender. All through World War Two with all of our enemies. Now, if we don’t win, we don’t win the war. There’s some kind of a stalemate, like in North Korea. Like in Vietnam, like. Like right now in Iran. But we had the upper hand, man. I mean, we really did. We really did, took out the top ranks, took out the the second tier, we and the Israelis together. As Admiral Cooper pointed out yesterday, as Haig, Seth pointed out repeatedly during the course of the first two weeks, three weeks, and then we had this long so-called cease fire. There wasn’t a cease fire. Then we started up again and we had another cease fire. Then we started up again. Then we had a memorandum of understanding. You remember how critical I was of that? It came under terrible attacks and abuse. But I’m a big boy. I can handle it. Been around a while. For not going along with it. Going along with what? Giving them over $300 billion that they pay for a few weeks at suicidal. Well, luckily. They didn’t get it because they violated it. They couldn’t they couldn’t resist that the enemy and they violated it. So they didn’t get any of that money, to my knowledge. And now. We’re dumbing down victory, I fear. I we’ll walk away to some extent. We’ll just say, Hey, look, we’re building these new pipelines away from the Strait of Hormuz and 70, 80% of the oil that goes through there won’t go through there anymore, folks. That’s an international waterway was opened before the war. The Iranians grab it. The fact is that it still has a geopolitical and military importance, and the precedent that it sends is horrendous. The communist Chinese, as we’ve talked before, they’re claiming control over the South China Sea, which is also international waters. And so you’re going to have all these regimes now making claims to international waters mean making navigable activity by our navies, by our commercial ships and so forth. Very difficult in some places. Impossible. So you don’t want to leave the region worse than when you went there? I’m just telling you the truth. Go ahead with Jack Keane, please. And to freedom of navigation and no interference whatsoever remains to be seen if that will ever be achieved peacefully. But that is that is the intent. But as we move closer, despite the success of the economic blockade, I’ve always felt that the people running the country don’t care that much about their own people suffering here. What they really care about is staying in power and the influence they believe they have over this administration. Moving towards the midterms, I’m convinced. Listen, just in the last few weeks, they’ve conducted 22 attacks. And as we get closer, I think they will run. The risk of the frequency may increase, but also the purpose of the attack and the violence of the attack may also. And the reason for that is clearly they in their minds, they think the closer they get to the midterm elections in terms of their actions, the less likelihood the president to respond militarily against. That’s true. Now, listen, you would think by now that all this time that this regime has been dealing with our president, that they would learn a little bit from their miscalculation that they’ve done in the past, that it’s been quite considerable. He has all the cards here. I believe the best card to play is a combination of all the economic levers that we’re using, the blockade. What Secretary Bessant is doing with sanctions and other things he’s doing is quite remarkable. And also military power. And I do think change takes place as a result of that. All right. Let’s let me let me say this, but it’s military power on the right targets. Okay. You don’t immunize the most important dual use. Economic targets because you don’t want to have to. Effect a rebuilding later after the war? No, the goal is victory. Kharg Island has to go. Any of the other dual use infrastructure that is oil has to go by God, arm those people over there. They want to fight. They have reason to fight. Many of them want retribution. They lost family members. I have no idea why this isn’t being done. What will be told is, well, this one stole this and those guys aren’t good enough, and we couldn’t find an opposition. Well, the Reagan administration created internal oppositions. They train them. They were called freedom fighters. I’ll be right back.

Segment 2
Francesca hung in Wisconsin. They’re having their primary today. Running for the Democrat nomination for governor is likely to win. She wants you to know the ultra rich need to be taxed. Cut one. Go. I learned. Then you have some hot takes, sometimes bad takes on Twitter, and I let my feelings out into the world. Right now, as governor, what I’m most serious about are the issues that voters are telling me they want solutions for for permanent affordability. To tax the ultra rich to make sure we’re getting corruption like he is out of politics, to make sure that we’re fully funding public schools and that we’re fighting for universal childcare and raising wages. Ah well, you know, this is very interesting to me. Tax the ultra rich. I think they’re all going to wind up in Florida, Michigan, reducing. So Florida is going to have a hell of a. A hell of a prosperous state. They’ll bring their businesses, their investments, their capital, their employees to Florida, which means really the middle class in Florida. Not only don’t they have an income tax and aren’t going to pay any property taxes either. That’s how it works. And I went through the numbers with you yesterday that the ultra rich, which they consider anybody earn $675,000 and over they would be if you know, spouses or whatever. It’s a lot of money but still they’re not ultra rich. That’s what they mean by all too rich. And they want to tax them at 90%. Now, who’s going to stay in a state that taxes you at 90%? Nobody. Now I want to address more of this, too. Child care for all. Raising wages. The state’s going to make sure. So you’re going to take the money from the people who have the resources to invest in capital. Then you’re going to force them to increase wages and to pay for universal childcare and massive property tax increases for government schools. How that’ll all work out just great.

Segment 3
One of the things that concerns me in America and one of the reasons I think younger people are are sort of more drawn toward. Socialism than they should be, quite frankly. Is because we have abandoned. So many of the great thinkers and the great communicators of the not so distant past. We’re actually absolutely superb. And explaining capitalism. And individual liberty. Constitutionalism and so forth. Milton Friedman. William F Buckley. Thomas Sole. The list is so long columnists that we used to have. There’s still some, but not enough. With modern day so-called influencers. They’re influencers by their own nomenclature, by their own ego maniacal appointments. And they have websites. They can go on the Internet. They can beat their chest, pat themselves when they had bullied people, denounce people as people out. These are relatively moronic individuals. And so what happens is. When you look at our colleges and universities, when you look at K through 12, when you look at the media and now when you look at the Internet, you have people pushing socialism, you know, people pushing communism. People pushing anti-Americanism, people lying about our history, distorting it. And then you have pseudo conservatives or conservatives of a kind, I suppose. Who want to redefine what conservatism is, because, you know, conservatism just can’t win elections anymore. Which, of course, is a lie. But nonetheless. Our greatest victories have been with conservatives or people who claim to be conservatives. All this talk about free markets, all this talk about the the Constitution. All this talk about free will and individual liberty. The regurgitation of the Declaration and the Constitution’s provisions. All this stuff gets us nowhere. It’s not a winnable a winnable argument, don’t you know? And so they come up, they concoct these fictions. And first of all, they want you to believe it’s a brand of conservatism. And what it is, is socialism lite. What it is, is centralized government light, but not so light, I guess. And so you’ll see people on the Internet, you’ll see people even on cable TV, you’ll see here people in radio. We got to do something. We got to do something. We got to intervene. We can’t just go in capitalism and the market system. Yeah, we got to do something. What is Trump going to do to lower prices? Now, the fact is the government increases prices, creates economic dislocation in myriad markets. And so they want more intervention. Now, by intervention, I don’t mean the relaxation of taxes and regulations, because honestly, nobody has reduced regulatory authority more than Donald Trump. And in the big, beautiful bill, he slashed taxes across the board. For the middle class, for everybody. For everybody. For which he gets no credit, by the way. So what do these people propose? They don’t propose anything. So what is this intervention that we’re going to do? What what is it going to be? I don’t know. But it’s got to be something. And we got to do it soon. Get out of war and we got to talk. Affordability affordable. Now they have great arguments to make, but they’re too stupid to make them. The blue states, the blue cities, the the cost is out of control. Out of control. And you can point to them. But ladies and gentlemen. This idea of nationalism and populism and. Common good conservatism. These are just. Sort of ish. Plagiarist takeoffs. On big government centralized socialism. Now, I’m not talking about anarchy. You and I don’t support any We support the Constitution. States want to do certain things. If they complies with their constitution and laws, they are free to do them. So long as it doesn’t violate the federal Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Okay. That’s why federalism is so brilliant. Genius. People who like Liberty are in Florida. People who like iron fisted, centralized government are in California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts and so forth. Many of them are government employees, bureaucrats. They love it. Because they’re the ones who make out the best. The bureaucrats and the politicians in bed together against. The working people. Oh, yeah. But what I find is and this is a real. Sire. Old Russian sire is You’re finding that younger people. Are ignoring. Even condemning. The older generations. As if they know more. And it’s we don’t understand what, quote unquote, they’re going through. This is an old Russian sign up, old Soviet Union, the Communists and so forth and so on. And it’s working in our country. And it’s working. Turning one age group or one generation against another. As much as you turn people against each other based on race and religion and ethnicity and and, of course, income. The goal is to disunited America. This uniter. But there’s a tremendous amount of we can learn from people who’ve come before us. That’s what books are for. We don’t read books anymore. While. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick, tock. Tick. That. We’re on the Internet. Some people are on the Internet day in and day out. 24 seven. It’s incredible. Now, just to tell you a little bit about me, I might put together five, six, seven things to post. And I write every single one of them. The author of every syllable. But I’ll send them to Mr. Producer and he will post them. Syrian, but with little breaks between them, she and him saying little breaks between. So I may written about 12 hours ago. Sometimes I will write them in real time. Of course, Just depends. But you have people who sit there 24 seven. And they they’re in think tanks, they’re in law firms, they’re politicians. It’s just nonstop. Because people want to be heard more than they want to learn. Got that? People want to give their opinion more than they want to educate themselves. And so now we have the isolationists as if that’s some kind of a conservative position. It certainly isn’t. So they attack conservatives. Now we have the common good interventionists. We call them nationalists and populist nationalist conservatives, national conservatives, populist conservatives. Excuse me. Oh, yes. Look at your Constitution. Is that about nationalism or federalism? Look at your Constitution. Is that about populism? All about individualism. But now you’re told, reject them. At least reject them enough to make room. For the common good. Now. I understand. The founders of this country. The Declaration of Independence lays out, quote unquote, the common good natural law, natural rights, unalienable rights. The consent of the governed and so forth and so on. That’s the consent of the people. That’s the common good. But the common good is not. Centralized economic decision making. When I wrote my book American Marxism, I pointed out that what the left had done so effectively over the last hundred years is they’ve taken the issue of constitutionalism and civil liberties, and they have now institutionalized. Or legalized. Marxism. That is, it’s now defined based on. Not economic output, but economic distribution distribution. So a system is racist if if there is an economic distribution equal among the races. A system is oligarchical. If you actually a wealthy people in a country of a capitalist country. And I went on and on to explain that what the markets have done, in addition to all the rest of it, is they’ve applied this to Americanism. To the Constitution. And what I’m finding is the so-called national conservatives, or whatever they call themselves and the populists have done the same thing. And you can hear them when they break away. And the founding principles when they when they don’t articulate them because many of them are just too stupid to articulate them or they don’t even understand them or comprehend them. Then, you know, they’re sliding off the cliff. Then, you know, they’re sliding off the cliff. The isolationist, same thing. The founders weren’t isolationists or we never would have had an American Revolution. The French never would have helped us win a Yorktown and win the Revolutionary War. No, George Washington’s farewell address wasn’t the farewell address of an isolationist. He understood that if we took the side of Britain or France, we didn’t have much of a military. We would be destroyed. Wasn’t an isolationist because he also talked about. Having meaningful and important alliances. But nonetheless, the isolationists sound like the left us today, don’t they? When you listen to these isolationist, who do they sound like? Bernie Sanders. Chris Murphy. Many of them sound like man Donnie, to be perfectly honest about it. We’ll take a short break. We’ll be right back.

Segment 4
We talked about the other day, Social Security. Right. I’ve mentioned this really throughout the last decade. I wrote a book about this issue of these these various programs and where they were heading. Plunder and deceit. Many of you read it. Many of you acquired it. And so just as night follows day and day follows night. Democrats say the GOP is pushing for deep cuts to Social Security. This is AOL, of course. Democrats are pushing Republicans for clarity regarding their plans for Social Security senior benefits their millions of Americans depend on every month. Senator Elizabeth Warren. First of all, notice it’s all about Democrats, what Democrats want, calling the most radical among them right there in the first sentence or two. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Ron Wyden. And he’s a crackpot. And other lawmakers sent a letter to Republican House Speaker Ryan, Mike Johnson, rather, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune regarding the issue. Their actions come at a time when the future the Social Security program is uncertain and Democrats appear to be raising the alarm about alleged Republican plans for the program in 2027. The Republicans put forward plans, have they, as they have for ten years, they would grandfather in people who are 55 and older, which is becoming more difficult to do because of the of the emergency of what’s happening now and the and the time the clock ticking and the Democrats propose, you know what they propose? Massive new tax increases. They’ve always proposed expanding programs while these programs are collapsing and bankrupting. And this is what they propose. And so they can use it against the Republicans. And I told you this is exactly what they would do, because this is exactly what they always do. So in six years, Social Security is incapable of funding itself, no matter how much money you put in or how much money you put in now. They want to do the same thing to Medicare. And then they run a fear mongering campaign that anybody who wants to touch it. No. And you don’t have massive new tax increases in addition to a massive new debt that we have. They’re going to take us down a black hole of disaster. And that’s who they are and that’s what they believe. So the Republicans have this proposal and the Democrats are now already trying to exploit it. I’ll be right back.