I’m not proud of it, but I have spent much of my career in talk radio. Consequently, I know, first-hand, that the vast majority of hosts are frauds. There are very few that I ever really respected. Two of those were Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.
Limbaugh lost his fire and became out of touch many years ago, but — if only out of loyalty and awe at what he had accomplished — I still considered him to be for “real.” That ended when he sat back and laughed while Donald Trump pulled off a hostile takeover of the Republican Party and killed conservatism in the process.
Now that Rush has become a full-blown Trump apologist, I see him as a sad joke. I question whether he was always like this and I never fully caught on, or if, like a post-scandal Tiger Woods, he simply felt forced to sell out in order to keep up the perception of his relevance.
If there was one national host who I was most sure to be rock solid in his principles and who would stand up for what he believes in, regardless of outside pressures, it was Mark Levin. Nicknamed “The Great One” for his remarkable intellect, Levin’s belief system seemed unbreakable.
And then came Donald Trump.
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What has not been defensible, in my view, is that Levin has now, seemingly having been bitten by a rabid canine carrying the “Trumpsanity” virus, has turned into a full-on attack dog on behalf of Trump, even when he is dead wrong. While this has been evident for a while, it has become major national news in the last few days as it appears a commentary by Levin was the genesis for Trump claiming that then-President Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped during the election.
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So, to summarize, other than the stories being completely unconfirmed, Trump and Obama not being involved, Trump Tower not being targeted, wiretapping perhaps not even being used, and none of it seemingly being done illegally, Levin is trying to claim that Trump’s tweets, based in large part on his original commentary, totally hit the bullseye. The Mark Levin I know would have had a field day if someone from the other ‘team’ ever tried to pull that kind of stunt, but the days of intellectual consistency in the ‘conservative’ media are long gone.
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So what’s really going on here? It’s sadly rather simple.
Levin’s best friends/allies in this game, Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Matt Drudge are now all card-carrying members of the state-run media. I’m sure there is pressure on him to stay in this ‘club’ and there is no doubt that the talk radio and Fox News Channel audiences want to be safely riding the Trump Train without taking any truth-based detours. Pissing off the Trump cult is basically ratings death in the “conservative” media.
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This isn’t all about ratings though. Talk radio in general is terrible at defending and much prefers to be on offense. Levin found a way to turn this whole Russia story into an attack on Obama, thus giving him back the boogeyman that you need as a punching bag when your team is in charge of nearly everything.
Trump heard about this through Breitbart and liked the idea of creating a target for his cult to blame. (This reminds me a lot of what Bill Clinton’s team did with Ken Starr during his impeachment saga.) He then added some juicy/fictitious details, knowing that being president would give him inherent plausible deniability, at least with his supporters, because, after all, he “has info no one else does.”
As for Levin, I emailed him yesterday politely explaining that I was going to write about how the guy who had once been my favorite radio host had devolved into a Trump sycophant and I asked for him to comment. As I expected, I did not get a response. Much like Trump in this latest flap, he simply has no legitimate defense.
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Here's my new column on how & why the "great" Mark Levin went from harsh Trump critic, to state-run sycophant. Sad! https://t.co/6Ka7nkCKqN
— John Ziegler (@Zigmanfreud) March 7, 2017
Ziegler has become pathetic… https://t.co/NDFH3kj9iO
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) March 7, 2017
Ziegler has become a pathetic, self-indulgent lightweight constantly attacking fellow conservatives, particularly since he lost another radio job. Nothing happened to me, creep. You’re just incapable of discernment and rational thought. I cannot think of a single thing you’ve ever done to advance conservatism.Another good reason not to listen to talk radio.
No, it is all about ratings. Talk radio is on the decline, and Levin is grasping at relevance.
He knows better, but, like Jim Jordan, Rep from Ohio who just refused to say that Trump’s tweets were bullshit, these guys are playing to an audience of idiots who have money to spend and votes to cast.
I’ve never been more disgusted at the Republican Party.
I stopped listening to Mark the day he jumped on the Trump bandwagon. I was a loyal listener to Mark for years and was a subscriber to his tv show. I won’t be renewing my membership.
I don’t know if how his ratings have been since he left the sane train but I do know that Trump tends to drag everyone who supports him down to the lowest common denominator.
I learned a valuable lesson from all of this however.
I’ve quit listening to all them now. I read some things from time to time. I like Deace’s articles, but his show is not doing it for me any more. For one thing, the guy he has on for movie reviews is insane, and Deace is in over his head in the way that he is being tempered by these movies. I think he watches them all. They HAVE to have an effect on you at some time, the very reason we did not raise our kids on tv and rarely went to the movies. He is still smart and has some good commentary, don’t get me wrong, but there are a lot of things that we should be discussing and he is not taking the bait. I think he is still firmly in the GOP. his radio program was one of the best, but it is changing, for whatever reason. I have joined the new Federalist Party over at the New Americana. I cannot be part of the republican party again. I’m over it. It left me and some need to leave it soon before they are forever tainted by the GOP’s reputation. They are a party with a reputation of lying.
As for Mark Levin, as soon as Cruz dropped out, he was all in for Trump. I knew he would. We listen to Glenn Beck sometimes. We listen to some good teaching on end times on youtube. (David Nathan, Bill Randles, and Jacob Prasch, and we listen to John Haller.) I never thought I’d ever drop out of politics altogether, but I have.
Pray for righteousness to be restored and for the peace of Jerusalem
Does anyone know why Mark Steyn was fired from CRTV? This is basically Mark Levin’s production. Did he make a joke about Trump that Levin disapproved of?
Pray for righteousness to be restored and for the peace of Jerusalem
I wish I knew the real story behind the Steyn firing. All I have read is that Steyn says he was not paid for his show.
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