On Sunday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Life, Liberty & Levin,” conservative talker Mark Levin blasted the Biden administration for its response to a situation in Ukraine that is spiraling out of control by the day while seemingly enabling Iran to achieve its nuclear ambitions.
Levin said the status quo made him miss the days of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
Trump, according to Levin, looked to be a foreign policy genius based on the present situation.
Transcript as follows:
LEVIN: As you watch and I sit here, Vladimir Putin’s thugs are committing war crimes and atrocities at his direction. And in fact, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned, they are not committing enough war crimes and atrocities because only then does he believe that they can take Ukraine and take Ukraine quicker than he can right now.
Biden likes to say bottom up and middle out when it comes to the economy. Nobody really knows what he is talking about, but I want to use that in the military context with Putin.
What Putin means by bottom up in middle out is: I want to kill as many of their citizens as I can in Ukraine, starting with the babies and the women to make it so atrocious, so horrific, so inhumane that the government will finally hand me these cities in hand me the country and hand me the entire society, so I can finally get what I want, Ukraine. And then from there, I intend to move. I intend to move beyond that.
Now, how do we know he intends to move beyond it? Because he told us. He spoke about it and wrote about it last summer.
What is it what these analysts don’t understand? That this is just the beginning when it comes to Vladimir Putin.
Now, we keep hearing the word “escalation.” We don’t want to escalate things. War crimes are one thing, genocide is another, but we can escalate beyond that.
Putin hears this, his lap dog, Lavrov, he hears this the Foreign Minister, they all hear it. So, what do they do? They increase their threats and the nature of their threats. Because they hear us talking about: Well, we fear escalation. What he doesn’t hear us talking about is deterrence.
Deterrence. Peace through strength is about deterrence.
What you’re hearing from this administration is passivity, is weakness. That’s what Putin is hearing. That’s what Xi is hearing. That’s what Tehran is hearing. That is what they’re all hearing.
Why do you think they attacked in the first place?
And so he waves around the idea of nuclear weapons. We know he has nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union has had nuclear weapons, now Russia, for over half a century, so have we. Why didn’t they use those nuclear weapons if we dare to be involved in facilitating the delivery of MiG 29 old jets to the Ukrainians? Okay, so only modern missile systems, mobile missile systems can be conveyed. It doesn’t even make any sense.
And if Putin wanted to use nuclear weapons, well, why doesn’t he use them? If he is that much of a nut. If he is that much over the edge, he doesn’t need to wait for “provocation,” quote-unquote, or “escalation” quote- unquote, and have we escalated anything?
He invaded a sovereign country. He invaded a country that his country has an agreement with in 1994 to help protect their sovereignty if they give up their nukes. There are no nukes there. There has been a phony story about American biotech centers there to develop weapons and so forth. And, of course, the Putin wing of the Republican Party and the Putin wing of the media and the Putin wing of the Democratic Party, they are all over it.
Now, those are old Soviet locations that the United States has located and has been trying to deal with. We are not developing biochemical weapons in the Ukraine. What is it about these so-called American Firsters in the end who are really American lasters, if you think about it?
You see these pictures of the babies being killed. You see a maternity ward hospital attacked. That was targeted attack, 600 beds there. That’s one of the biggest hospitals they have. Why?
They target a nuclear power plant. Oh, Mark, you believe those stories they attacked — they attacked it. That’s why the Ukrainians gave it up because the Ukrainians didn’t want a nuclear response. That’s why.
But would Putin use nuclear weapons against the United States? Well, what is he waiting for? He is waiting for MiG 29s to be given to the Ukrainian pilots? Through Germany? That’s what would trigger the launching of nuclear weapons? Not cutting off as oil? Not ground-to-air missiles?
I mean, come on, folks. This is the problem.
So we get this word “escalation.” It would be viewed as an escalation.
The same damn Generals in the United States Department of Defense, the same Joint Chiefs of Staff, the same President of the United States, the same Vice President of the United States, the same Secretary of Defense who surrendered in Afghanistan. The same Secretary of State who surrendered all leverage we had with the President of the United States with Putin prior to him invading.
The same Secretary of State and President, who is effectively — are effectively arming the Iranians with nuclear weapons as I speak. They are the ones who are afraid: Oh, we don’t want to escalate. Escalate? It’s deterrence, ladies and gentlemen.
Our enemy see we are weak. Our enemy see the budget that the Democrats originally put up under Biden, which flat lines the United States military, while spending enormous amounts of sums, historic amounts of sums on everything else. They see it.
And then I love these analysts who go, “We can’t escalate, Mark.” What are you talking about? The MiG 29s. We don’t want to drag NATO into this.
You know what, ladies and gentlemen, I really do miss the Reagan days and the Trump days. We never thought this way. We never talked this way.
The reason Putin didn’t invade Ukraine when Donald Trump was President is because he respected and feared Donald Trump. That’s why deterrence.
Trump increased the military spending. He talked NATO into increasing their spending, even though he was attacked as a Russian operative who was undermining NATO. No, he was fed up with NATO because they wouldn’t spend the money they needed to defend themselves.
Iran? Iran didn’t — in a pot — if you get my drift, because they feared Trump because Trump was destroying Iran. He choked Iran. Missile man, little rocket man over there in North Korea, he was behaving himself, too. We can go on and on and on.
For all the attacks on Donald Trump, the man was a foreign policy genius, was he not? Sorry, John Bolton, you really blew it.
Now all that aside, I have a piece here at “The Tablet,” which is a fantastic magazine, where Natan Sharansky is interviewed. Now, why is Natan Sharansky important? Because he knew Putin. Because he served in a Soviet prison for nine years on a 13-year sentence for hard labor. He became an activist. He became a refusenik. He became a worldwide figure that the Soviet Union attempted to silence.
So he was asked recently: What do you think about all of this and all that is going on? And I want to do something on this program that we really can’t do on many other programs, but we have a long form program here, and so I want to do this now.
“Putin has said over many years that the biggest tragedy of the 20th Century was the destruction of the Soviet Union. So his mission is to bring back that unique Russian superpower. He doesn’t want to bring back communist ideology, which he’s not interested in. Putin views himself as filling the shoes of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Stalin. These are three of the big heroes who brought historical Russian lands under one rule.”
“So whether it’s Poland or whether it’s Kamchatka, he sees these all like czar — all Russian lands — and he sees bringing them back as historical charge. He tried Georgia in 2008. He got Abkhazia. He got South Ossetia, which are now in fact, Russia. Chechnya, too, of course, though, with a lot of blood, but now, it’s his.”
“And he is active all the time in Kazakhstan and other Stans.”
“But of course, the key was always Ukraine. Even in our dissidents’ prisons, when we all saw that the Soviet Union would be falling apart because it was too weak from inside, the critical piece we saw was Ukraine.”
“In our dreams, Ukraine was becoming an independent country like France or something, not only because of the large population, but because it had the wheat and the coal, the metallurgy and missiles and everything.”
“Russia is not the strongest country, and Putin is not the strongest leader in the world. In fact, Russia today is something like three percent of the world economy and NATO represents closer to 50 percent.”
“And here, it is very important to understand Putin’s psychology. From my time among criminals in prison, I know very well, that the one who is the ringleader in the cell is not the one who is physically strongest, but the one who is ready to use his knife. Everybody has a knife, but not everybody is prepared to use it.”
“Putin believes that he is willing to use his knife and the West is not and that the West can only talk even if it is physically stronger. He is especially feeling the weakness of America.” He says, “I think, I don’t know for sure, but I think the withdrawal from Afghanistan showed him that it would be very difficult for this American government to mobilize for military action. And so he can threaten nuclear weapons. He says, ‘Ukraine is not a country, we’re going to bring it back to Russia and those who stand in our way will suffer such damage they have never known in their history.’ So all his means of deterrence are prepared.”
We talk about us escalating and not our deterrence, “And America’s answers to cancel training of the nuclear forces, which had been planned for a year, the Pentagon cancels it and says, it’s because we don’t want to be responsible for bringing danger to the United States. So Putin couldn’t get a better sign that his deterrence works. So now, he really believes he is the strongest leader in the world, not only because he is prominent, not only because he doesn’t have to worry about things like the silly Western elections, but also because he is ready to threaten nuclear war and his enemies are not.”
“He is willing to use his knife. He was right that the West would not be ready to meet his military threat, but the West is mobilized by sanctions. So now, the sanctions are a very dangerous weapon against them and they will have in effect for a long time.”
“So he understands now that he doesn’t have had much time, but the time he does have, he has to use it effectively, using the threat of nuclear war in order to invade, to destroy, to occupy and then if the world is scared, to continue testing the limits.”
What is Sharansky saying? He is repeating the Reagan Doctrine: Peace through strength. You have the biggest badass military on the face of the earth, you show that you’re willing to use it and every step of the way here, whether it’s Biden, whether it’s his C.I.A. Director, his National Intelligence Director, his Secretary of Defense, his spokesman for the Defense Department. Whether it is also commentators on TV, hosts on TV, whether it is people writing articles, they fear Putin, they fear his nuclear weapons.
Look, can’t pretend he’s not a nut, and he can’t pretend he doesn’t have those weapons, we understand it. More the reason to show strength, more the reason to show deterrence.
We’re doing exactly the opposite, and so the people of Ukraine suffer. And I am tired of watching people, wringing their hands about the horrors that are going on.
When Lindsey Graham said — and he wasn’t the only one, I had mentioned it, too. Brother Hannity had, too — that Putin needs to be taken out. You would have thought that the man who had committed some kind of horrific crime. Meanwhile, it is Putin trying to take out the President of Ukraine. It’s Putin who has used assassinations. It’s Putin that’s using this undercover group, the Wagner Group, like some kind of special SS operation to take out people.
Folks, it’s not enough to be upset about what’s going on. There need to be real policies in place. And I’ve heard Generals, Generals who we have respected in the past, who are basically shining and cringing and turning their heads and saying, you know, Biden has a tough decision to make. Now, he doesn’t. Either you want to address this and confront it, not with nuclear war, but do it in a sensible way.
I mean, Reagan brought down the entire Soviet Union without firing a bullet and we were all over the world confronting the Soviet Union, from Africa to Southeast Asia, to Afghanistan and everywhere else.
What you need is smarts. What you need is deterrence. What you need is strength. That’s what he understands, and Xi and all the rest of them.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor