June 26th, 2025

On Thursday’s Mark Levin Show, the Senate parliamentarian is blocking Medicaid changes to waste, fraud, and abuse in the big, beautiful bill. House Republicans proposed tightening Medicaid eligibility with work requirements and restrictions on illegal aliens, but the Senate parliamentarian deemed these changes outside budget reconciliation, exposing the bill to a filibuster. The Senate’s decision not to challenge this ruling perpetuates Medicaid misuse. Additionally, the Senate opposes raising the $10,000 cap on home mortgage interest and property tax deductions, disproportionately affecting taxpayers in high-tax blue states. We need to maximize tax deductions for individuals no matter if they live in a blue or a red state. Presidents Reagan and Trump’s tax policies fueled economic growth. Also, Zohran Mamdani, a New York City mayoral candidate, is a dangerous Marxist Islamist with ties to anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activities. Mamdani’s proposals, including city-owned grocery stores, massive tax increases, and refusing to cooperate with ICE, are policies that could drive out productive residents, attract welfare-seekers, Islamists, and Marxists, and lead to economic disaster for New York City. If Mamdani gets elected you will see authoritarian democracy in NYC. Authoritarian democracies mimic authoritarian regimes, using seemingly legitimate legal processes—such as passing tyrannical laws or disregarding due process—to justify power, prioritizing legality over justice or morality. Later, John Catsimatidis, owner of Red Apple Media and grocery chains Gristedes and D’Agostino Supermarkets, calls in to warn that he’ll close his grocery stores if Mamdani wins the NYC mayor race. Catsimatidis explains that Mamdani’s policies, including massive tax increases and defunding the police, would drive businesses out and harm the city’s economy. In addition, capitalism drives innovation and improves quality of life by creating wealth through valuable goods and services, such as grocery store chains offering affordable, diverse food options. In contrast, Marxism destroys societies without producing tangible benefits. Capitalism underpins everyday conveniences—clean water, electricity, advanced healthcare, and mobility—unmatched globally. Marxist and socialist ideologies promise unattainable utopias while overlooking capitalism’s capacity to foster equality through social mobility, enabling anyone to rise from poverty to wealth. Finally, Johnny Joey Jones calls in to discuss his new book, Behind the Badge – Answering The Call To Serve on America’s Homefront.

Photo by Kevin Carter

The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.

Rough transcription of Hour 1

Segment 1
Hello America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. Lots to get to, by the way, on this. This great big bill. I could be wrong. If the Senate’s making it look better, I’d like to know how. The House Republicans. To their great credit, they looked at Medicaid, They saw illegal aliens were getting Medicaid. They wanted to tighten it up. They see that individuals who are sound of mind and body who won’t work at least 20 hours a week were getting Medicaid, which is which is a welfare program. So they wanted to fix that and have a stronger work requirement in there and a couple of things like that. So the Senate parliamentarian who was a bureaucrat. Has apparently ruled that that’s not part of a budget process that’s more policy oriented and therefore does not fit within the reconciliation process. Now, what’s all that jargon mean? What it means is if you put it in the bill, the bill is subject to a filibuster as opposed to just a majority. Now we know what the Democrats would do with it. So, Senator Thune, as I read the various press reports, has said that he will not he will not overturn the parliamentarian’s decision. So now, if this bill passes, it means that all this fraud and waste that’s going to individuals who shouldn’t get it under Medicaid, they’ll get it. Okay, I’m cutting to the chase. No Washington, DC jargon. Number two, I guess I’m in the minority on this with some people, I don’t think with you, but I think inside Washington. These deductions for home mortgage interest and property taxes. There used to be no cap on that. None whatsoever. None. But then they put a $10,000 cap on it. Because their view is, well, that’ll cover most people. And so the Republicans went back and quite frankly, some of the Republicans from northeastern states were taxes are ridiculous. They got it to go up, I think it was to $40,000. Now, that doesn’t mean most of you need a $40,000 tax deduction. But this isn’t just about Frank over there and Sally over there and Hakeem over there and so forth and so on. It’s what’s best for the country. My attitude is always, if you can keep more of your money, you earned it, you earned it, and you should keep as much as possible. This is Ron DeSantis. And for you here in Florida, where there’s no income tax. All taxes are low except for these property taxes, and the state has nothing to do with it. Easily, it’s the selfish, damnable counties paying off teachers unions and everything else. So the property taxes are fairly high in Florida and the state has no direct control over it. So he wants to address that. Well, in a lot of states, a lot of you Republicans live in blue, a purple states, and your property taxes are significant. And so it seems the position of the Senate Republicans and they’re not the only one says, screw you. You live in a blue state. They have to lower the property taxes. Otherwise you’re going to suffer. Now. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. At the federal level. We’re talking about taxes. We should be able to keep as much as we can. Whatever the state property taxes are, it’s not about rewarding this state or that state. If you have. MAGA. People living in New York, living in California, living in Illinois. You know, they don’t we don’t all live in one little neighborhood. They should be able to have as much of a tax deduction as possible. Does anybody else? No, but we’re going to punish the blue state. What do you mean, punish? You’re talking about individual citizens. It’s their money. It’s your money. That’s my view. I remember when Reagan was president, we had massive slash of taxes across the board. You know, we had he got rid of the inheritance tax. Because you’ve already paid taxes on that money. And so it was zero zero. Not today. And then when it came to interest deductions and property tax reductions, there was no cap. No cap on that, no inheritance tax. And you know what happened, ladies and gentlemen? Massive economic growth. For the years that Donald Trump was president, our economy grew by almost one third. The entire damn economy grew by almost one third because of his tax program. So the Republicans. We’re acting like kind of rhinos. Well, the Senate says we’re not going to go along with this House saying a $40,000. Deduction. We’re going to go back to ten. Why? Well, we don’t want to benefit these these blue states. We never even had those arguments during the Reagan administration. Was it a matter of blue states, red states, purple states, polka dot states. It was a matter of the individual taxpayer. They’re the ones who pay the taxes, not the state government of New York and California. And Illinois and Rhode Island. A real human being with a family. You pay the taxes. So I have a strong disagreement with the Senate on this. And a strong disagreement with the majority leader. Sunni should override the parliamentarian. We didn’t vote for the parliamentarian. You got a program that’s full of bloat and fraud with illegal aliens and people who can work. Able bodied, able mind, people who want work. And you’re paying their health care. So the parliamentarian says, who gives a damn what the parliamentarian says? Who cares what the janitor says? I don’t care. Not that there’s anything wrong with him. It doesn’t matter. Crazy. Crazy. And she got this this Marxist Islamist. And he is he is a dangerous man. The Zoran Mamdani. He. He started his chapter of students. For justice in Palestine. That is a Hamas terrorist front group. And they have hundreds of these these entities on our college campuses. They are here to overthrow the country. It’s a big supporter of BDS. BDS is an anti Semitic anti Israel program worldwide where the anti-Semites get together and they want to destroy the economy of Israel by refusing to do business with them. We actually have liberal Republican Democrats like Chuck Schumer, like Jerry Nadler, and they’re not alone. And many of them have now endorsed this guy. Who now endorse this guy, as my wife said. Why? Because the religion is the Democrat Party. Frankly, we Jews are stuck with people like this, and we have been for a long, long time. We really have self haters self-promoters. Every faith, by the way, every ethnicity, every background. It’s the same damn thing. But I’m speaking to my people and how infuriating it is. I have nothing in common with Schumer and Natalie. Nothing. Nothing. Zero. And they’re willing to back somebody like this. Back. Somebody like this. Guy wants to start city owned grocery store. So we’re going to talk about that next hour. He wants massive tax increases for business. He will not allow ice in his city, even though that is. Not under his control. But that means he’ll. He won’t let the cops help work with ice. So you’re going to have productive people. People are long time New Yorkers leave the city and you can have people come into the city who want welfare, who want freebies. You’re going to have Islamists come in. I don’t mean Muslims. I said Islamists. Of course you’ll have more Marxists come in and you’re going to have a disaster on your hands. The biggest city. The financial center. Of America. This city that was ground zero in 1775. For the Revolutionary War. The tax revolt. So we’re going to take a very short break. And I want to read something to you that’s very important. Very important. We’ll be right back.

Segment 2
Before I read to you what I want to read to you, which I think is very important. After the bottom of the hour, I want us to regroup and think about something. Till today is June 26th. June 26th. On June 4th, I met with the president of the United States at his request. On June 5th, it was leaked. On June 5th, I was attacked. We’re trying to get the United States to go to war. A couple days after I met with the president. And I don’t like the two. The 60 days that he gave Iran to negotiate and basically surrender past the day 61. The Israelis struck. They struck, I believe it was two or three days later. We had a hole relatively small, but a whole group of people. He accused me of hoping to start that war by convincing Donald Trump. To support the Israeli effort to attack Iran. Now, let’s let’s go ahead and embrace all that all that noise. Okay. The president of the United States, the secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State. The vice president, the United States. 94% of Republican MAGA support what took place, right, Mr. Mitt? Support. Support. The Israelis did. And then later supported what? We did 94%. 80% of the American people. Generally 80%. Isn’t that interesting, Mr. Producer? It’s not that I was right. It was inevitable. There was no choice. It’s that simple. Despite all the all the lies about World War Three and regional wars and all the rest of it. You and I, We knew it was right. We knew it had to be done. We knew the Israelis had to strike. And we knew. At some point beyond that, we had to drop those bombs. The. It obviously knew, as did his entire administration. Now, isn’t that interesting? The point is what? The point is. We were right not to pat ourselves on the back or the head, but we were right, which means the isolationists were dead wrong. Dead wrong. 94% of Republican MAGA. The media have been writing ever since about this divide in MAGA. There is no divide in manga 94% to 6%. That’s not a divide. But they keep promoting it and they promote these people. Although that will stop just a matter of time because they’re humiliating themselves. Because they want there to be a divide. The Israelis had an act and we had an act to take out those sites. We pay a price, your kids and grandkids would be a horrendous disaster. But we don’t have to talk about that because that’s not what happened. Now there’s a cease fire. I don’t know of any ceasefire that’s ever last forever. This one won’t either. It won’t either. Presidents do everything he can to contain this. Everything he can to put in his policies, which are great. Negotiate, try and get the deal, try to try to hammer it down and so forth and so on. It’s the enemy that’s the problem. Not the president, not the Israelis, not me, not you. Even now, they won’t say their surrender, their nuclear program. Even now they say they won’t surrender their ballistic missile program. Even now they say they won’t stop backing their proxies and so forth. They haven’t conceded any of it. I’ve talked about this. Newt Gingrich is talking about this. General Cain has talked about it. It’s a serious matter. And the president will talk about it and have to confront it and deal with it. And I wouldn’t want anyone else to do it but him, because if anything can get done, he’ll get it done. He’s not an ideologue. He’s not an isolationist. Very, very important to understand this. Very important. I just want to remind you. In this battle here at home, which does affect policy. You won. We won. The President won. Maga won. Now we’re under attack by the media. The Democrats, the President of the United States. Can you prove you hit these sites? From a media that never wanted them to hit the sites from Democrats who never wanted them to hit the sites from isolationists who never wanted them to hit the sites. I see unity among conservatives and Republicans and MAGA like I haven’t seen since the election. There’s a new analysis out that says if even more people had voted in the November election, guess what? Donald Trump would have won by even a bigger margin. On top of another one I just saw that said he almost won a majority of the Hispanic vote. Can you believe that? Not the biggest amount of Republicans since X, Y, Z. He almost got a majority. Incredible. Incredible. When we come back, I will read you that section that I want to read you. But what took place with the Israelis? I told you what would take place. What took place with the United States military. I told you what would take place. I told you no regional war. I told you no World War Three. I told you it was all B.S.. It’s all B.S.. You know what the Israelis did. And we did. Was incredibly important for humanity. But the enemy persists even if Iran is wiped off the face of the earth. TSA is not going away. They are terrorist organizations fighting terror. They’re not going away.

Segment 3
This Islamist terrorism is not one battle. It’s not one country. It’s not even one region. It’s not going away. That’s why we have TSA in place. The president hasn’t eliminated that. That’s why we have terrorist law enforcement units coordinating with each other at local, state and federal level. Talk about sleeper cells. The sleeper cells were already here. What are they doing here? 911 was not a provocation. They just did it. Because that’s the mindset. Explain this a great length pages 45 to 58 in my new book on Power. But I want to read something else to you right now. We have an individual who could get elected mayor has the inside track. It’s not 100%. Who to me is the enemy within. Is the quintessential enemy within Hates America hates our economic system. He. He’s being championed by a royal family member in Qatar. He is a rabid anti-Semite despite his smile and he finally put a suit on. Cleaned him up. BDS movement that is an economic war against the state of Israel. It’s. He wants to defund the cops. He wants to eliminate jails. He wants city run grocery stores where you’ll starve to death. In the book, Ladies and gentlemen, I call this authoritarian democracy. This is very, very important to understand the authoritarian democracy. I saw a liberal Jewish lady who’s on the board, I think, at Columbia, and I believe she was on. Fox and Friends yesterday or today or whatever. The days are running together. And she says, look, I don’t have to agree with everything, but this is democracy at work. This is democracy at work because there’s there’s an election. Democracy doesn’t insure liberty, doesn’t insure property rights, it doesn’t ensure security. Democracy is a system by which you choose individuals in a government. That process does not ensure. Picture, unalienable rights, your basic individual liberties and your security and private property will be protected, and this proves it. This proves it. Representative government? Yes. Consensual government? Yes. But just to say, while we have democracy, we get to vote. Really? So I call this authoritarian democracy. In the book, I coined these words because I think they’re important. What is it? Negative power need not be exercised or present itself in such aggressive forms for modern Western societies. Most of which are said to be advanced, enlightened and democratic. Negative power is more opaque or what I call soft negative power. What is negative power? In one word. We’ll get into this in a couple of weeks. It’s coercion. It’s the centralization of power and of fewer and fewer individuals. Typically, Western institutions have been established gradually by experience and practice, reconstituted by design, to counter or limit the most aggressive forms of negative power such as dictatorships and oligarchies. However, over time, they tend to become susceptible to a softer form of negative power. I hope you really. Intrigued by this because this is explaining exactly what’s going on in New York City right now. Political parties and political movements in the West look for advantages in acquiring, holding and expanding their power. With a changing election, laws governing increasingly through non-representative bureaucracies and so-called independent agencies and commissions. The rule of carefully selected judges excuse me, the role of carefully selected judges or judicial councils and the like. The conflict between honoring and complying with institutional limits placed on power and the allure of self-aggrandizement is both real and perhaps inevitable over time. As such, the once authentic and thought to be effective institutions for limiting limiting excesses of power are transformed into Potemkin like fictions. Used to disguise the intentions of the abusers. Like this guy. Bizarre and mundane. And worse are transformed into tools in support of the exercise of soft negative power. I call this authoritarian democracy. If this guy gets elected, you’re going to see it in spades in New York City. Authoritarian democracy is when a democracy begins to slide into a form of authoritarianism, not all at once, but steadily, where authoritarian attributes slowly proliferate and one branch of the democracy begins to develop, the others are all branches coalesce into one. Either way, the exercise of power is steadily centralized and the citizenry increasingly peripheral. It typically results in the rule by the unelected governmental branches, but can also mutate into excessive executive or legislative empowerment. This sound about right, Mr. Producer? About what’s going on in New York City. Authoritarian democracy’s adopt the and excuse me, adopt and use the tactics of authoritarian regimes, albeit at first with more of a glove than an iron fist. But the underlying attributes are there. For example, legislatures that passed tyrannical laws by which laws are said to be legitimate simply because the legislature adopted them. Courts that disregard due process by which trials are said to be due justice because they were held in a court of law with defense counsel and juries present and so forth. The use of law is said to be a legitimate application of power because it is the law, not because it its proper just or moral law. Even today, the impact of authoritarian democracy has seeped into our society psyche so successfully that the late Austrian American economist Ludwig von Mises observed that one of the worst tyrannies of all Marxism has become part of the West’s psyche. Is that not the case right now in New York City? He said to a considerable extent without knowing it. Many people are philosophical Marxists, although they use different names for their philosophical ideas. And I. Go on. However, there are also those, perhaps many, who benefit from the government’s use of soft negative power, including when that power is used, for example, to forcibly redistribute the wealth and property of those who produced and earned it for the use and enrichment of others beyond the usual and basic needs of a civil society and justify what would otherwise be considered thievery as noble and even moral. And there he is, the Marxist, the Marxist Islamist, Zahran Mamdani. Massive tax increases, massive redistribution of wealth. And of course, people are going to support it. Because they benefit from it. But what is not discussed? Not even a little, except by me. And in this book is the liberty. Is the governing construct that you are going to lose as a result. And ultimately the tyranny, the poverty, the impoverishment, the results, the beneficiaries of such soft negative power are fully aware that they did not earn what they have received, but delude themselves in various ways that they are deserving it. Democrats have the excuse me, democracies have the seeds of their own destruction within them. Folks, this is two and a half pages. I’m explaining what’s going on in New York before what was taking place in New York, not because I’m Nostradamus, but because I’m thinking these things through. I’m writing to you. I’m warning you of what is good and what is bad. Democracies have the seeds of their own destruction within them. The today’s soft negative power is ascendant. That is, the West, which obviously includes the United States, is regressing toward the more primitive way of thinking and governing and the more aggressive form of negative power. The circle of liberty and security surrounding each individual is shrinking as the supposed common good and public interest, defined and determined by a relative handful of masterminds and politicians, is said to be increasingly imperative and paramount. The assumed legitimacy for interference in the individual’s life has become so routine, assumed to be both necessary in an. Habitable that their justifications are less important anymore. The growth of centralized government and its attendant authority are presented as and indeed seen by many as predestined, even essential to human and societal progress. This is in my new book on power. You’re getting a little bit of an audio version from me live, which is just not available yet, but will be soon. If you want to grab your copy, please go to Amazon.com and preorder now just a little bit more. I realize that what follows in the book. Will be dismissed or castigated by certain partisans and fanatics, but that’s to be expected since my observations involve them and they are not laudatory. In truth, among the most dangerous domestic menaces to present day America is the Democrat Party. It is a political institution that exists for the purpose of agitating for it and in fact breaching the Constitution’s firewalls and pursuit of the ever elusive earthly utopia. It is home to, among others, conglomeration of Marxist socialists, an Islamist ideologues and activists. Of course, this is not to say that the majority of its membership share that ideology. However, those ideologies, however, the majority of its membership does not rule the party. The people in the party don’t rule the party. I say this not as hyperbole for partisan political purposes, but as an everyday witness with functioning eyes and ears, reading and and hearing the daily barrage of declarations and promises about the fundamental transformation of America and the dogged assault on Americans foundations by its academics, Democrat Party apparatchiks and surrogates. Indeed, unlike reform in. The fundamental transformation which they speak, is the wholesale transmutation of a nation’s character and traditions. I’m not going to read the whole book, although I did the whole audio for the book. And there’s much more than that. Just as yesterday when I was talking about sovereignty and God and the West and the Enlightenment versus Islam and Marxism. And their mental approach and worldview. It’s all coming together. It’s all coming together. And I break it apart and then put it back together so you can understand it. So you can understand it. This book on power. I’ve written a lot of important books. I wrote a book, Liberty and Tyranny, that sold a million and a half copies. I wrote a book, American Marxism, that sold 1.4 million copies. This may be more important than those books. Given the times we live in, For too many Americans, our guard is down. Our guard is down. I hope you take advantage of this. I really do. We’re going to talk about it a lot more because it’s it’s philosophy. It’s scholarship. It’s history. But their application apply to this day and this minute to your lives. Crucially important. I’ll be right back.

Segment 4
All right, Zoran Mamdani on ABC News yesterday. Now this is the polished Mamdani cut go. You call yourself Democratic socialist. The word socialist, of course, has been vilified and used to attack you specifically. How do you define being a democratic socialist? I think of the words of Dr. King, who decades ago said he was a Republican and you’re a Marxist Islamist. So don’t defame Dr. King. You should quote who you really believe. Arafat. People like that. You’re a fraud and a phony and a fool. No, I had socialism. There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country. And really, who’s going to figure that out? You. You’re going to do that to me. Ladies and gentlemen, as I also explain in the book, where’s there more prosperity for more people on the face of the earth than in the United States of America? Where? Nowhere. In the regimes where the government controls the distribution of food and so forth. Most of the people are starving. So what this man does is he takes a third world model. Economic socialism, Marxist ideology. And he’s going to create more wealth and equality. And he quotes Dr. Martin Luther King. For his propositions. Go ahead. And my belief that every New Yorker should have what they need to live a dignified life. It shouldn’t be something that they can be priced out of. And that’s why at the heart of our campaign is this focus on what does that mean? Every New Yorker should live a dignified life. And does anybody know what that means? What does that mean? What does that mean? It means nothing. It means nothing. And this is what the Marxist do. They have a whole chapter, by the way, on language. This is the language. Mao Tse tung said this stuff killed 60 million people. Not that this guy will kill anybody. That’s not the point. This kind of language, these kinds of arguments have been used by genocidal maniacs, by dictators, by Islamists and Marxists. For decades or longer. To justify their destruction. I’ve Liberty. Limited government. Diversified power. Economic growth and prosperity. It used to be that his ilk would attack the United States for creating too much material wealth. Now they argue there’s not enough to go around. Whatever works. Go ahead and rent stabilized tenants making the slowest buses in the country fast. And there are in the country about 1200 people who are just wealthy beyond and beyond anything. Right. And then 25 years ago, there were only about there there there were all these people wealthy. Beyond. And so what have they created? We’re going can have one of these gentlemen. On the program next day. What have they created? Grocery store chain so people have food at a good price. Choices they don’t have anywhere else on the face of the earth, in their communities, in their neighborhoods. So who cares if that person’s wealthy? What does that have to do with anything? Or somebody invents something that we need and use helps the quality of life they’re going to be wealthy to. But that that means more and more of you want to buy it. So what’s wrong with that? Why is it. That the illegal alien, the welfare recipient. Why is it that they’re to be held up as an example, that people who are successful or not? Why is that, America? Go ahead. 1200 people who are worth more than $1,000,000,000 and much more than that. So what? Maybe there ought to be a. 10,000 people depending on what they’re creating and what they produced. They’re not robbing banks, America. They’re not robbing banks. We’re giving them our money. In small ways and large. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses. Free online courses. Learn about the United States Constitution. Janet The Genesis Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. The History of Ancient Christian Church. Hillsdale College’s free online courses offer that a ton more. And yes, understand capitalism. Perfect timing. It’s a great, great course. Seven Lectures The role of Profit and Loss. The nature human nature plays in the economic system, property rights, the rule of law, and above all, freedom. All these things are what capitalism creates. And with this clown who’s 33, who hasn’t produced or created a damn thing, who wants to completely rejigger an entire society, he’ll destroy the whole damn thing, just like all these Marxists do. I’ll be right back.