August 20th, 2026

Rough transcription of Hour 1

Segment 1
Hello America. Mark Levin here.  Our number 877-381-3811.  877-381-3811. One of the dangers of so-called national conservatism. Which has a. Rather. And on a committed but relatively small following, in my humble opinion. Not to put it down, I’m just saying is that it overlaps. With the left. It overlaps with the left. It de-emphasize his individualism. Number one. And number two. It emphasizes I’m trying to give it a legitimate thumbnail sketch without getting into that deeply. But we can at some point that each nation state is a separate nation state, and that really ought to be the focus that every. Every state has the right to be what it wishes. So I have a different view of this. And it’s not globalism. I mean, talk about globalism. Look at all these people investing in Qatar. And Saudi Arabia and all the rest of it. Talk about the globalists. Look at all the foreign money that props up some of these podcasters and some of their websites. So I don’t want to hear about globalism with them having alliances with countries that have similar the same interests. Has been a crucial American objective from the start. It’s crucially important. And there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with it. But of course, we believe in American sovereignty. And one of the reasons we build alliances is to protect America’s sovereignty. Now. We should have learned these. These lessons and the last 120 years in these different world wars that we’ve been involved in, as well as other big wars. But apparently some people have not. Nor have they. They learned the lesson. How you avoid big wars is by being the biggest superpower, period, by having alliances with other countries, including forward bases. So that our territory. Our country is in hit. Our territories are in hit even on the outskirts and in the Pacific and so forth, as they were by the Japanese. And so. They try and contrast individualism. And thereby kind of trash. And the Enlightenment and the fusion of the Enlightenment. Would you? The Judeo-Christian belief system and values, in my view. By talking about the necessity. Of this nationalism idea. And. In terms of strong borders. We emphasize that terms that traditional religion and culture. We emphasize that. But they’re very isolationist oriented. Because, again, their view is each country has a national identity. But I agree each country has a national identity. They don’t believe that we should be getting involved in these international institutions. I don’t believe we should be getting involved in these international institutions. We have a constitution that’s a governing document, not anything that comes out of the U.N. or anybody else, for that matter. For that matter. And. I support traditional family structures. We support traditional family structures. I think the protectionism. The protectionism, the economic protectionism. And economic interventionism. It’s too close skating to the line of the left. I think what we need. Is a strong and consistent. If not relentless argument. For the free market process. And, yes, rugged individualism. Not to the exclusion of the civil society. Of course, we believe in this civil society. We do. And. We believe in patriotism and national loyalty and so forth and so on. But we also believe in federalism. That’s one of the great. One of the great aspects of our of our society. The states existed before their national government. And that was a good thing because it created an entirely different approach, an experiment. To the organization of government, which has served us well over the. You know, 250 years we’ve been in existence in one form or another. So I’m not into grabbing too what are pseudo new? There are not even that new, but the pseudo new ideologies. You know, national conservatism and so forth and so on, which is an excuse for isolationism in many respects and is an excuse. Excuse for crushing federalism, much as Woodrow Wilson wanted to do. And it’s an excuse for central government interventionism in the economy. I would suggest to you we have plenty of that and enough of it to the tune of $40 trillion. I would suggest to you. And we need the opposite. We need deregulation, further tax cuts. The shrinking of the central government. We’re not going to survive this economically in the economy. Should it go down? We’ll take down the entire society. You saw what happened just during COVID. It didn’t take much. Your civil liberties were under attack right across the board. And in the blue states, they were the worst in a blue city. They were the worst of the worst. It didn’t matter what the science said. It mattered that certain people said what the science said. I think that’s a fair way to put it. Mm. And so that’s. Something we’re going to be battling, I suppose, in the Republican primary, the upcoming primary. There is this movement, as I said, and they want to be paid in as the as sort of the patriots, as the patriotic movement. They’re not the patriotic movement. In my view. You’re not. I believe they basically have taken the Pat Buchanan ideology and they’ve kind of dressed it up somewhat. Dressed it up somewhat. And I understand they have used the Edmund Burke Foundation as a. As one of the points. To project from. And I’m a big Edmund Burke fan. But I think I’m more Edmund Burke than some of these other people, quite frankly. And again, again, attacking them. They have their view and we all mean the right thing. And. I’m just very concerned, you know, It was. It was Macy’s who said. We all sound like Marxists now and this endless effort at intervention. I don’t care who’s added at this point, unless the purpose of the intervention is to deregulate, is to slash taxes, is to reorganize the priorities of the government away from redistribution and a welfare state. And we can have some of that, obviously, but we can also reorient a lot of it in a way that supports our military, our infrastructure, all the things that government is supposed to do, not the things that government’s not supposed to do. And I would need a better understanding of the extent to which we are to abandon the Constitution for this interventionism. I love the way some of these guys point to the. You know, Federalist Papers. Which suggests to me they haven’t actually read them beginning to end. Of course, I’ve damn near memorized from beginning to end. They’ll pull out a sentence or a paragraph here from. From one of the essays. And they were essays. And they think that proves their point. It doesn’t prove their point at all. Not in the least from what I’ve read and what I’ve heard. Best as I can tell. Now this neo Marxism that they talk about and they write about is certainly in the Democrat Party. It’s not in the Republican Party. But I get the feel for this in national conservatism. And look, national conservatism is is as I say, it’s not a new idea. There are different degrees to it. Some are more aggressive, some are softer. But you may have heard of a man named Theodore Roosevelt who wrote an entire. Effectively a treatise on the subject. Fact, they have it among my many, many, many, many books, probably thousands at this point. And I cited it. In my book, Rediscovering Americanism. You know, this word Americanism wasn’t used all that much until I wrote that book. Now, again, everybody’s saying, we got to defend Americanism. That’s good that people say that, don’t you think? The question is, what do they mean by it? What do they mean by Americanism? I’ll be right back.

Segment 2
All right. Maggie Haberman is supposed to be a journalist for The New York Times, but he really is a left wing goon and. Is a Trump hating thug. I’ve never understood why the president or his people would, from time to time, throw her a bone at the New York Slimes where she works, which is unsurprising. But they did. I hope they don’t anymore. This is a woman who is obsessed with Donald Trump. This is a woman who wouldn’t have a career but for her obsession with Donald Trump. And she’s one of these so-called new journalists. Who takes facts and takes gossip and creates fake news and mixes it all together. Next. Is it all together? She put some hot sauce on it. Then she puts a little yellow mustard on it. Then she put some ketchup on it. Oh, yeah. And then she says, Eat it, eat it, and slaps it out there and slaps it all over the television screen. And they love her. At the Constipated News Network, CNN, or wherever else they can get her. Because she is such a complete. Disgusting reprobate. And so she and another woman. On a news channel. Discussing again? Natalie Harp I think this is day four because a reprobate. Trust fund. Radical kook Senate Senator and Senate candidate. Off. Throws it out there. Insinuating that something inappropriate is taking place. And we’re not talking about Matt Gaetz here. We’re not talking about Eric Swalwell here. Okay. And this is a very upstanding woman, Natalie Harp. And I’ve explained this many times. There is no information. There is no evidence. There’s nothing zero. And we’re on day three now. I think it’s day three. Right? Which day? Three? And so in order to continue this. They drag this Maggie Haberman, who looks like a homeless woman, by the way. I’ve called her maggot. HABERMAN All these years, I believe that’s been picked up. They bring this Maggie Haberman from The New York Times that covered up the Holocaust, that covered up Hamas’s atrocities and tried to blame it on Israel. That covered up the slaughter of the Ukrainians in 1932 by Stalin. That. Then help bring that brought Castro to power in the pages of their newspaper. That New York Times that has more blood on its hands and say cooperation. You know, people talk about I don’t I don’t trust corporations. Well, the number one corporation you should not trust is the New York Times Corporation. And they’ve demonstrated it. Every single time there’s been a horrendous genocide or a horrendous event. You’re they’re on the wrong side. They cover it up or they’re participating on the wrong side. And so she says, we’re not going to play it. I don’t even want to play it. She says, Well, you know, we haven’t seen Melania with the president lately. It’s possible Melania is upset about. Natalie Harp. So that’s another level of deceit. When I look at some of these women, I’m starting to think they’re projecting. No, I don’t mean to be rude. But, you know, it’s like the mean girls. In high school. They hate the pretty girls, you know. But they’re strong. They’re very. Muscular. May I say, Mr. Producer? I won’t say Bushy. I’ll say muscular. Is that okay? Can I say that? And Haberman strikes me as this person. I’m sorry. If things are flying, let them fly. And I think she’s very. Frustrated. Because she’s not actually in on the action. That is the action of politics and government. She’s on the outside having the log in, and I think it frustrates her. I think it frustrates her that Donald Trump won and then won again. And I think it frustrates her that they’re actually hard working women who are doing a great job for this president. Instead of supporting them, she’s a sleazeball.

Segment 3
You know ladies people come up with these ideas and they want you to think, wow, that’s fantastic. That’s an unbelievable They’re not new ideas or they’re a compilation of older ideas. I’m a constitutional conservative. Most of you are constitutional conservatives. The Constitution tells us sometimes very specific terms, sometimes in very broad terms, sometimes with very particular text. Sometimes it’s a bit ambiguous. But if you try to follow it, you can follow it for the most part, right? We may have disagreements, different constitutional scholars on sort of degrees of issues and so forth, like a like it’s Clarence Thomas or an entered in Scalia on rare occasion. Whether it will serve you well. It’ll serve you well. A constitutional conservative. The Constitution has. For its. Foundation. The principles, the values and the beliefs that undergird the Declaration of Independence. And that would be the Enlightenment and that would be the jail. The Judeo-Christian belief systems. So they’re all wrapped together in one form or another. So you’re not left to wonder. You try and put the pieces together as best you can. All right. Excuse me. Cholera, but. You know that interventionism that is not provided for in the Constitution and so forth. Or different positions that people take that are not provided for in the Constitution are not constitutional. And just because the federal government doesn’t do something doesn’t mean you can’t. Just because the federal government doesn’t do something doesn’t mean the states can’t. Just because the federal government doesn’t do something doesn’t mean a town can’t. Now we have the supremacy clause, and that means if things are supposed to be handled by the feds and only the feds, well, that’s that that’s there. But for the most part, you as an individual, you’re free to live your life. You need to follow the law. Can’t commit crimes. There’s certain regulations you have to comply with depending on your town and state and so forth. Some of them apply federally. If it were up to the left, all of them would be applied federally. But this idea really that that clouds things up or mucks up clear thinking, let me put it that way. And suddenly you just throw it on to the fire. National conservatism. Excuse me. Oh, yes. Now, let me explain to you what it means. You don’t have to explain to me anything. You don’t have to explain anything. I know what the founders said. I know what the framers of the Constitution said. I’m speaking for us now and we know what they said. We don’t need a new theory to tell us. What they meant. We don’t need a cut and paste job from the Federalist Papers to tell us what they meant. We know what they meant. There are many speeches. There are many things that they said. I mean, I’ve even studied and we’ve shared and I’ve written about them what took place at the state conventions during the adoption process. And this is where the amendments to the Constitution came to be. And ten of them, the Bill of Rights came to be. So we have a lot to work off. A lot of good stuff. Substantive stuff. We have it. And so we don’t need to invent new ideologies. To overlay onto our belief system, do we? Well, I’m a national conservative. What are you. Excuse me. What do you think the framers of the Constitution would think of? I’m a national conservative. They wouldn’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. It wouldn’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You know, the word capitalism didn’t even exist. When this country was founded, it was invented, quote unquote, by Marx. Now, I’m not saying the market system or commerce was invented by Marx, as you well know I’ve been talking about for years. Capitalism is commerce. It’s spontaneous, calm commerce. Nobody invented it. It is what it is. People say. If nation states and nation states. We’re not talking about internationalism. We’re just talking about nations. I mean, I’m curious about that. So our economy should just stop at the border? No, no, we don’t mean that. Well, what do you mean? Well, we mean that our actions should be intended to strengthen our economy. Although we strengthen our economy by stopping at the border. Of course not. And we shouldn’t do things that undermine our economy that. You know, advance the cause of another economy over ours. I’m not talking about that. But what does the federal Constitution say about our role in the economy? Damn little. There’s even a commerce clause. Do you know why the Commerce Clause is here? I’m starting to think people don’t. They push these ideologies. They don’t even know our history. Anybody know why we have a commerce clause? They put that clause in the Constitution specifically because one of the reasons they needed a constitutional convention first, they they made a run at it in Annapolis, Maryland. They they couldn’t get together on it, but they needed to fix what was going on because the states were operating independently and blocking commerce from one state to another in one form or another, typically through taxation. And so they specifically put the Commerce Clause in there to promote what Mr. Producer. Commerce. Now that Commerce Clause has been bastardized to promote the opposite of commerce over the decades, which is to give the authority to the federal government to regulate commerce. So between the courts and the left and then the Supreme Court, they took the Commerce Clause, which was a pro commerce clause, and turned it into a pro regulation of commerce clause. So you and I don’t recognize that as legitimate, do we? I don’t. I do not. Now, what’s interesting to me. Is that when you actually explain the Constitution and embrace it somehow your controversial. Well, controversial at all. So at a minimum, ladies and gentlemen, when we have a new crowd that comes along. And it may include the vice president. I’m not clear on that yet. But whomever it is, it doesn’t really matter. Well, actually, it does, but not for the point of this discussion. If you have a view that there needs to be more government intervention for the working class or the middle class. And by the way. Who keeps getting hurt from all this government intervention. The working class, quote unquote, and the middle class, quote unquote. Not the poor and not the very rich. Very rich have their way and the very poor are getting an awful lot of money that they didn’t earn. So I just want to finish this point. What’s the basis for interventionism? They’ll point to the Commerce Clause. But that’s even step back from that. Let’s put the Constitution aside, which I’d rather not, but for the purpose of our discussion. How much more intervention does there need to be? Ah, but it’s not the right kind of intervention, they tell us. You know, she talks like that. The Marxists, you point out Stalin. Well, he did it the wrong way. Castro. He did it the wrong way on in North Korea. He did it the wrong way. Stalin. He did it the wrong way, too. We haven’t tried it the right way yet. You understand? Because it doesn’t work. Now if you have intervention for the purpose. For the purpose. Of controlling what the government has done for liberating markets. That’s different. Now, you know where you can read about this. My book on Power. It’s a short book, but it is a it is dense with arguments. It is dense with arguments. I’m not telling you to run out and buy it. I’m just explaining how I think and why I write what I write. There’s what I call negative power and positive power. What’s negative power? What’s positive power? Positive power is that power which advances the civil society and individual liberty. But not at the cost of the civil society. Will they work together? And how can they work together? You ask. Well, I don’t have to reinvent the wheel as Montesquieu. He’ll tell you how. And he was the most. Followed a philosopher during the constitutional period. Three branches of government. That is separation of powers. Checks and balances. In our case, we also have federalism, which is fantastic. We have the states and so forth and so on. This is how brilliant our Constitution is. This is why we’re constitutional conservative people who want to rewrite the Constitution. These are lame brains. These are people who want to rewrite the Constitution because they don’t believe in the protections that are in the Constitution for the individual or the civil society. They don’t believe in the Declaration of Independence. They don’t believe in any of this stuff. But then we have people who claim to be some former conservatives, some kind of hyphenated conservative. We are right. I tell you, I’m a constitutional conservative. Not a literal hyphenation, but you get the point. But the national concern is that we’re not that we’re not traditional right now. We’ve got to change the way we do things. I really do tell. And among them, more intervention is only for the working people. Excuse me. Doesn’t that sound like man dummy? And what are the limits to this, if not the Constitution? Intervention. How far are you going to go? More redistribution of wealth. In other words. Is it socialism lite? Nothing more than socialism. In another form. Isn’t that the point? You need a party with a philosophy that’s going to push back against a $40 trillion debt soon to be a $50 trillion debt. You need a party that’s going to push back against the tentacles of the big welfare state. You need a party that’s going to push back across the board. Now, there are, again, areas of overlap where we agree. But that’s not good enough. Donald Trump is more a constitutional conservative than not. As a matter of fact, people will say, well, look at tariffs and look at this. And by the way, tariffs have been around since the beginning of the Constitution in our republic, just to be honest about it. So people point to tariffs. I get it. They perhaps they point to other things like a percentage of a private sector company owned by the government. I don’t agree with that. But again, we can get into that stuff. That’s not what I’m. It’s not my point. My point is that he is fundamentally more constitutionally conservative than not. And we’ve had a lot of Republicans who talk about the Constitution but have done nothing to defend it. Nothing. So if we’re going to have this battle in the 2028 and I hope we have it, I don’t want any coronations, but with these different issues popping around and there are many crucial issues to the survivability of this nation. Including what kind what kind of pushback are we going to have against another side that believes in Marxism and socialism and Islamism? It can’t be some weak interventionism. I’ll be right back.

Segment 4
We’ve got a lot here and I’ll start hour two. But I thought it’s necessary to put down a few of these substantive markers and we are going to pursue them and we are going to expand on them in the course of the many months ahead, certainly into the election and beyond the 2028 primary, because there is a primary, the the leading dog in that race is likely the vice president. But the vice president’s going to have to clarify his philosophy. And he’s also has to deal with his relationship with Tucker Carlson and his ilk. And he’s going to have to clarify that as well, at least for a lot of people. You know, folks, there’s no point keeping it secret. It’s just the truth. But any candidate who chooses to take him on is going to have to clarify what their views are, what their positions are and what their experiences. You’ve been a senator two years in a vice president. You don’t have a lot of management experience. And when your views have changed so significantly over the course of a couple of years, really that’s something that needs to be vetted. Now, under our system, you and I vetted. Same with other candidates who may want to be president, who’ve been senators or governors or congressmen and so forth. Same thing is going to have to happen. And you know what happens when you come out of that system? You have a stronger candidate. Because the Democrats are going to throw everything, everything. You have a stronger candidate. So that’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. You saw what happened with Kamala Harris. That was the worst coronation, I think, in not just modern American history. In American history. You know, except for the fact of an assassination, which. You know, a number of things kick into place that have to kick into place. But the way that was handled was so grotesque. And repulsive to a huge swath of the American people. All of you, I’m sure. So there will be a duke out. There will be some of that going on. There’s an effort to try and prevent that online. It’s not going to work. It’s not how it works. We’ve also learned, haven’t we, as I’ve said over and over again, that these influencers, podcasters, these people online are not influence, are not influencing anybody. They’re not influencing anybody. We’ll be right back.