Mark Levin on the media's errors while covering the Russia investigation
'Life, Liberty & Levin' Host Mark Levin discusses the liberal media's Russian collusion narrative on 'Hannity.'
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," May 17, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Welcome to a special edition of “Hannity.”
Tonight, we're holding the media in this country accountable as I sit down with the great one, Mark Levin, for an entire hour. His brand new book, "Unfreedom of the Press." And we're going to take a journey that starts at this nation's founding, remembering the once great press tradition in America and how it ended up becoming nothing more than an extension of the Democratic Party and all things left wing.
We'll uncover what went wrong, how the media fell so far so fast. We'll be exposing every hoax, every lie, all of the besmirchment this media mob has told to smear a duly elected president of the United States and just do nothing but divide this country. From the Russian collusion delusion, to Covington, to ignoring the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in our nation's history, we're going to take it apart piece-by-piece.
We will expose how they've abandoned the great tradition of freedom of the press in this country, choosing to act as nothing but partisan hacks rather than serious investigators, choosing to put fake news narratives over facts for years at a time, choosing to smear anyone and everyone who dares calls out their lack of ethics, their lack of objectivity.
Remember, the hate Trump media mob and the biggest names on the left never thought it would get to this point. Never thought President Trump would pull off what was one of the biggest political upsets of American history and deliver success after success, record after record, helping the forgotten men and women of this country. Take a look.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican ticket.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know you don't believe that, but I want to go on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sorry to laugh.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which Republican candidate has the best chance of winning the general election?
ANN COULTER, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Of the declared ones, right now, Donald Trump.
(LAUGHTER)
STEPHEN COLBERT, COMEDIAN: Mr. Trump, to answer your call for political honesty, I just want to say, you're not going to be president, all right? It's been fun.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president of the United States, exclamation point, @RealDonaldTrump.
Well, @RealDonaldTrump, as least I will go down as a president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: And a failed one at that.
Remember how they reacted the night Donald Trump won the election, November 2016. They started out, they were giddy, they were happy, the exit polls, well, they showed that Donald Trump didn't win a single state.
All through the night, the mood started to change, and it became completely unhinged. Actually, hysteria broke out. You might remember.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America is crying tonight. I'm not sure how much of America, but a significant portion, I mean literally crying. This is a sadness. It is a mourning moment for those people. And it is a moment filled with fear, filled with fear.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our country is about to face a crises. And so, you know, buckle up, your country needs you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A pretty extraordinary thing to say if you have a son in the Marine Corps and that you don't trust the commander in chief. People in the military defend the Constitution.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was a white lash. This was a white lash against a changing country. It was a white lash against a black president in part.
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HANNITY: And sadly, since that night, things have only gotten worse. The liberal left wing press, they refused to have any accountability, any responsibility for their failures. And now, they're just doubling down on what is a psychotic anti-Trump rage and frankly destroying whatever credibility they may have ever had.
Here's just a small sample of their low lights.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this president trying to impersonate Hugo Chavez, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He said today, America first. It was not just a racial -- I mean, I shouldn't say racial, a Hitlerian background to it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trump needs to be medicated and hospitalized.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump, again, being a schmuck.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can truly say his words have absolutely emboldened white supremacist.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's given oxygen to racist. He's clearly trying to ignite a civil war in this country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a sign out there hung up in the White House or outside of the White House saying, if you're not white, you're not especially welcome.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's a racist.
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HANNITY: Breathless, hysteria, conspiracy theories, fake news story after fake news story. Every minute, every hour, 24-hour day, every week, every month, as they work in concert with their partners, the Democratic Party. Nothing but a mere extension.
And the man who was exposing all of this -- well, he's out with a brand new book. He's the host of a number one show right here on the FOX News Channel on Sunday night, the host of "Life, Liberty, and Levin". And, of course, he has his nationally syndicated show, and author right there, "Unfreedom of the Press".
There's a reason I call him the great one. He's a great personal friend.
My brother, how are you?
MARK LEVIN, HOST, "LIFE, LIBERTY, AND LEVIN": God bless you, bro. How are you?
HANNITY: You know, what I love about your books, I mean, liberty, tyranny, everything you go through such detail, historical detail. You know, before I get to these idiots that we're playing here, you know, you do remain us about the press in the past and I remember you told the story, for example, of how they treated Jefferson, the brutal battle between Quincy Adams and Hamilton, I mean, that went on -- the legend in some ways.
But today is very different. So, my first question is, why did you want that context in history there?
LEVIN: First, I wanted the American people to understand that freedom of the press is their freedom of the press. It doesn't belong to CNN. It doesn't belong to MSNBC. Free speech, freedom of the press, they're both in the First Amendment for a reason.
When this country was started, it was the pamphleteers, a handful of newspaper men, the printers. They were great, great presence. And these were the men who pushed for revolution, who pushed the ideas, who talked about philosophers like Locke and Montesquieu, and so forth --
HANNITY: Which you have done in your past books.
LEVIN: Which I have in my past books. But these were the people, the printing press. They were only a few of them. They moved them from time to time because the British were trying to hunt them down.
They pushed these ideas. Thomas Paine was a great pamphleteer. There were many, many others. And what happened is people would read these, they talk about them at their pubs, at their homes, at their dinner table, and word would spread.
Common sense, Thomas Paine's pamphlet, it's estimated 120,000 people read it. It's a country of about 2 million people. And by the time it was over, half a million people had read it. It had enormous influence.
Why is it important? Because back then, what if our press -- they didn't call themselves a press, what did the press do? Promoted liberty, individualism, representative government, private property rights, low taxes and so forth.
And then from that period, soon there after, we had a party press. And it was brutal. And the press would at least be transparent. They would identify with the political party, with the candidate, with the cause.
And Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would really duke it out. Some of the people in the press were on the payroll of the political party and so forth. But they were all open about it. Again, is it very, very ugly?
Then you move into a period of -- and that lasted from about 1780 to the Civil War. Let's jump forward to the early part of the last century, the progressive movement. Well, they devoured much of our government, their ideology did. It does today.
They devoured these so-called media at the time, too. They wanted to professionalize them. They wanted standards.
They said, we needed to be more objective. But, they said, we need to -- you know, we need to have a handful of elites, a handful of people who understand the country, who understand the world through which all of this will be laundered, which is the way they view government too. The people are stupid, the people are plebes, they're too busy, or they're too ignorant. Let us tell them what to think.
Today's media, that's their heritage, they've taken it a step further. They're social activists. That's what they are.
They're being taught this in journalism school. It's not enough to report the facts. It's not enough to be objective, they argue, whatever that means. We have to push an agenda.
Some of them are out of the closet and they admit that we need to push the liberal and progressive agenda. Some of them, when you challenge them, they say you're attacking freedom of the press. And they pretend that they're still objective when they're not.
Survey after survey, study after study shows half of the country, the vast majority of Republicans, the vast majority of people who lean conservative or are conservative, do not trust the media. There's a reason for it. Another half do. Democrats, liberals think the media is pretty darn good.
So, when you lose the trust of half of the country, you're not doing your job. And they're not doing their job. They play to a niche.
Even the word "objective" is debated. Do we mean objective in the terms of the thinking of the journalists? Do we mean objective in terms of the process?
So they pretty much surrendered that. You know, a couple of months ago, Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press", he declared that manmade climate change is a fact. And we're not going to allow deniers -- we're not going to allow deniers on "Meet the Press."
He's more than the host of "Meet the Press". He's the chief political guru for the entire NBC network.
HANNITY: Mark, you seem to hand him a whole so-called news channel that's a conspiracy channel.
LEVIN: MSNBC.
HANNITY: It's sort of like Roswell, New Mexico, every night over there.
LEVIN: But this is an enormous disservice to the American people. Chuck Todd doesn't know the first thing about climate change or so-called climate change. You're a physicist, you have PhDs, climatologists, meteorologists, not just hundreds of them, thousands of them who debate manmade climate change, debate its effect, debate if it exists.
And he has declared we're not going to allow that on our show. So, that demonstrates to you, he's pushing the agenda.
This whole Russia collusion thing, what I write in the book also, Sean, is the notion of news versus propaganda versus pseudo events. The president of the United States is really on to something. When he talks about fake news, there was a brilliant historian, the University of Chicago, Daniel Boorstin, who he became the head of the Library of Congress, he wrote a book on pseudo events. He was talking about the news among other things.
They create their own reality, by how they choose events, how they create events, how journalists promote themselves through drama, you can see with Jim Acosta who creates conditions where the focus is on him and not -- this is an enormous disservice to the American people.
Pseudo news, Russia collusion with the Trump campaign. We have 2 1/2 years of pseudo -- as the president calls it, fake news. And pseudo news requires more pseudo news.
So, obstruction, a pseudo event, it didn't really happen, but they claim it. Seven hundred former prosecutors writing a letter, all liberals no doubt, there are thousands of former prosecutors. Another pseudo event.
Phony subpoenas that are intended to gather information that won't do the American people any good, that have nothing to do with congressional oversight. Pseudo events. This impeachment debate, absolutely phony. Another pseudo event.
Meanwhile, there's all kinds of events taking place in the world and in this country that are not being covered by news organizations. There are some exceptions. But in the aggregate, this is the condition we face. This is an enormous disservice to the American people.
Remember this. The First Amendment belongs to the American people. The Bill of Rights belongs to the American people. The Constitution belongs to the American people.
When they say Donald Trump is like a dictator because he calls the media or media outlet or media person the enemy of the people, they have no idea what they're talking about. Donald Trump points out, questions them, is harsh in his rhetoric, and ought to be. And you have Acosta in a few weeks going to write a book and say we basically have not seen anything like this, Sean.
Let me give you a history lesson.
HANNITY: It's in the book.
LEVIN: All of this is in the book. Let me give you a history lesson.
HANNITY: I just want to tell our audience, this is a very hard interview for me. I'm -- but this is honestly, the amount of work, because I've been in your house when you do the books.
LEVIN: You see them stacked up.
HANNITY: I mean, it's an entire two rooms full of books and papers and I don't know how you do it.
But keep going, I just want people to know how much history is in this.
LEVIN: Because I'm a nerd, what can I say?
HANNITY: Well, we need a lot of nerds.
You know, you mentioned Thomas Paine. Think about what he said, Mark, and this history you're going through. Government in its best state is but a necessary evil, and in the worst state, an intolerable one. But continue.
LEVIN: The media says Donald Trump is the greatest threat, or some of them do, to freedom of the press we've ever seen. That is a flat-out lie. They are historical illiterates.
Let's start quickly. John Adams. John Adams was a great founder, and he was a great man and a great writer about liberty and all things. So he and his party put in place the Alien and Sedition Act. But the sedition act is if you criticize that president, you criticize his party, you criticize the government, he has the power to imprison you. And you know what? He imprisoned some journalists and he shut down some newspapers.
Jefferson was furious. Jefferson was a libertarian. He runs against Adams, among other thing, against the Alien and Sedition Act. He wins in a brutal campaign. I won't get into all of the details.
But he wins. And he gets rid of the Sedition Act. And the media attacked him and brutalized him. And so that's the party press, the party press that supported Adams and Hamilton and his party and that party, would viciously attack him. And he would still say, I'm not going to touch it.
Abraham Lincoln during the civil war through his secretary war standard shut down approximately 300 newspapers, and imprisoned a slew of journalists, among others, among others, because they felt like whatever your argument is, they felt like they needed to because of the civil war.
Woodrow Wilson, one of the great progressive intellectuals who became president of the United States almost by accident, he went further. He put a new Sedition Act in place in 1918. And an extension of the Espionage Act, we're familiar with that.
And what he and his party did is they went after journalists they disagreed with. They went after political opponents they disagreed with. They put him in jail. He also put in place an extensive censorship campaign and an extensive government propaganda campaign.
The great progressive Franklin Roosevelt turned the IRS on newspapers he disagreed with. The owner of "The Enquirer" was investigated by the IRS at his direction. Gannett was investigated at the direction of Eleanor Roosevelt. So they would use the IRS.
Kennedy did too. Barack Obama. This is recent history. The FBI, the Department of Justice, went after "The New York Times".
HANNITY: James Rosen.
LEVIN: James Risen -- went after James Rosen of this network. Went after 20 reporters of "The Associated Press". Barack Obama.
Donald Trump hasn't done any of these things to. And to call him the greatest threat to the press is an absolute outrage.
HANNITY: This is just a primer. This is all in this book. The history is phenomenal. It's -- they even bring up presidential elections charges of bigamy and dueling.
And you show this history. It's fascinating to see how it has evolved but I want to bring it to current day. I do believe that the president's branding of fake news will forever be tattooed on their foreheads because of how low they had sunk.
The book is phenomenal, "Unfreedom of the Press".
We continue with the great one, Mark Levin.
When we come back, we'll discuss the media's unhinged coverage of the Russia probe and their meltdown the night Donald Trump was elected, as a special edition of “Hannity” continues.
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HANNITY: All right. As we continue this special edition of “Hannity” now, during the Mueller witch hunt, the destroy Trump media mob hysterically, breathlessly, running with one fake story after another, pushing a false narrative, pushing conspiracy theories about Trump-Russia collusion.
We have four investigations now including the Mueller report that concludes it didn't happen. But it went on for two-long-solid-years-plus. Remember this.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're about to find out if the new president of our country is going to do what Russia wants.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As if there are no shoes on the Trump human centipede that are not about Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This cloud about collusion of Russia will hang over him no matter where he stands.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think they're shocked that the noose is tightening.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's clear that Mueller is now connecting the dots between a massive obstruction intended to hide the truth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump's done. He's done. There is no question about it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's got to know his future looks like it's behind bars.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a treasonous president.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We now have to figure out how to deal with a president of the United States who wittingly or unwittingly has been compromised.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The presidency is effectively a Russian op.
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HANNITY: It's really sick. And on multiple occasions, the fake news media reported just outright falsehoods. Take a look.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They get the person's phone records, here, they see these calls to the blocked number, and now, there seems to be good evidence that that was probably President Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We begin the new report that Paul Manafort, the president's former campaign chairman, paid secret visits, multiple ones, to Julianne Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. This is according to "The Guardian".
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump directed his attorney to lie to Congress.
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HANNITY: So, the liberal mainstream media mob has become nothing more than an extension, a branch of all things radical, extreme, Democratic socialist party as they echo now every single talking point of that party.
As "NewsBusters" points out, Mark also writes about in his book, the media recently echoed this Democratic talking point there was a constitutional crisis over the Trump administration, standing up to House committee subpoenas.
And the media? They repeated it nearly 400 times. They talk and speak in unison. Listen.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So President Trump is pursuing a stone wall strategy when it comes to Congress and courting a constitutional crisis, but the honey badger president just doesn't care.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're certainly approaching a constitutional crisis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're hovering on a constitutional crisis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump appears to be heading toward a constitutional crisis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America is dangerously close to a constitutional crisis.
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HANNITY: Mark Levin's brand new book, "Unfreedom of the Press," I call him the great one.
Before I get to the Russian collusion stuff, I want to go back, 5:15, election night, 2016, I talked to you. I also talked to Donald Trump. I said somebody is drawing straws right now and they're going to bring you in news is horrible. That you didn't win a single state basically.
Exit polls were wrong in '04, they were wrong recently in Israel. But more importantly, when the media coverage started on election night, they were giddy. You could see it.
They had it in the bag. Hillary won. They beat Trump.
The night progressed. You could see a visible shift in mood to nearly going off of the ledge. Does that not prove what you're saying in this book?
LEVIN: Do your montages not prove it?
HANNITY: Exactly.
LEVIN: It's groupthink, it's a pack mentality. It's ideology going in one direction. You can't find a dime's worth of difference between the media and the Democrat Party this country.
Look at the guests -- one of the great problems -- 1942, there was a commission where the media looked at the media. The media never looked at the media today. But the media actually looked at the media --
HANNITY: This is in the book.
LEVIN: This is all in the book.
HANNITY: Yes.
LEVIN: And what they said is they gave a blaring alarm and said one of the great fears we have is the mixture of opinion with news.
I point out, there's a study by Shorenstein Center at Harvard, not right wing, not left wing, it is what it is. And they study the media.
They looked at the first 100 days of the coverage of Donald Trump. You know what they found? Ninety percent of the coverage was negative on CNN and NBC. Over 80 percent, "New York Times," "Washington Post," nobody was below the mid 70 percent range except FOX.
It was 52-48 percent negative-positive, about as even handed as you can get on the news side. There's no distinction between news and opinion on these other networks. It's hard to find distinction between news and opinion in the front pages of "The New York Times" and the "Washington Post."
I'll give you a few more examples.
HANNITY: Actually, you quoted, I think it was a political article in the book. First time they talked about impeachment was April of 2016.
LEVIN: They were talking about --
HANNITY: Yes, how many months out of the election.
LEVIN: They've been talking about impeachment since he was a candidate.
This idea of a constitutional crisis, I spent my life working on the Constitution. You have a lot of individuals in Congress who have no comprehension of what they're talking about. So they get a lot of air time on MSNBC and CNN. They get a lot of -- they get a lot of time on the pages of "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post".
Just because Congress issues dozens and dozens of subpoenas doesn't mean that the subpoenas are legitimate. And in this case, they're intentionally illegitimate. They're all personal. They're all aimed at citizen Trump.
They're all violations of separation of powers. The president has an obligation, not just for himself, but to protect the office of the presidency and the executive branch.
It is Mr. Nadler who's the dictator. Mr. Schiff who are the dictators, they're the demagogues all over TV. These are not objective individuals. These are not people looking for the truth.
They don't care -- if they cared about how the IRS handled presidential tax returns, why didn't they care about it when Barack Obama was president of the United States?
HANNITY: How can they as lawmakers talk about the sergeant of arms putting the attorney general of the United States bringing -- putting him in handcuffs, bringing him over to the committee, when all the attorney general is saying is, I will not break the law. You're the one -- they're the lawmakers.
LEVIN: If it gets to that point, let me remind these tough guys in the House. I don't know, when I look at Nadler, I think tough guy, don't you?
HANNITY: Oh, yes.
LEVIN: I look at Schiff, I think -- he's the guy kicking it all over the soccer field.
HANNITY: Yes.
LEVIN: But in any event, let me suggest to the house, stop the stupid comments, I suggest to you the Justice Department has a lot more manpower and firepower than the House of Representatives.
HANNITY: Let me ask you this.
LEVIN: Yes.
HANNITY: So we go through this two-year Mueller investigation. We've now had a nine-month FBI investigation, no collusion. The House Intel Committee, no collusion. No conspiracy.
We went through the bipartisan Senate committee, now the Mueller report, the same thing. And they want to keep going.
And my question to you is, 99.9 percent of the people in the media went with the hoax, the conspiracy theory, the lying, and a narrative that was based on false information.
LEVIN: Right.
HANNITY: OK. There were a few of us. You're a part of this group that maybe 25 in the country. We did it on my radio and TV show. You did it on yours. Rush did it on his. Gregg Jarrett, Sara Carter, DiGenova, I can't name everybody.
LEVIN: Right.
HANNITY: And the point is this, they got it wrong. Hillary's investigation was rigged. They didn't report it.
LEVIN: Can I interrupt you?
HANNITY: They obstructed, and didn't report it.
LEVIN: They didn't get it wrong. This is what they wanted to do. They don't care about right and wrong. They're driven by ideology. When you're driven by ideology--
HANNITY: But they reported it wrong.
LEVIN: Purposefully. They want to take the President out. They decide what's in the news, what's left out of the news. That's why for them there's a red line, and all of these issues involving the dossier, all these issues involving spying, they dismiss them, they dismiss the people who speak about it, they dismiss the words. This is an ideologically driven process. Let me give you a story, give you a little historical context on chapter 6.
The Holocaust, 6 million Jews are slaughtered. Others are slaughtered. The New York Times barely covered it. The New York Times barely covered the holocaust. The New York Times is owned by a Jewish family.
It barely covered the holocaust because Mr. Sulzberger decided he didn't want his newspaper to be seen as sort of a Jewish newspaper. He wanted the newspaper to be more of a universal newspaper. FDR didn't want to focus on the Holocaust. So The New York Times complied.
They wouldn't accept evidence that was coming, was being printed in European publications. They pretended the evidence was not quality evidence. It wasn't good enough. People have escaped, firsthand accounts, for the most part they ignored it.
Three scholars in particular have written about this. How many people know that The New York Times self-censored when it came to the Holocaust ten years before, when Stalin was slaughtering the Ukrainians and starving them to death? They had a correspondent in Moscow by the name Walter Duranty, he got a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, covered up the slaughter that Stalin had committed against the Ukraine.
This is The New York Times. Can any other in the business survive that, let alone be called the paper of record, All Of The News That's Fit To Print? The New York Times still hasn't significantly and seriously dealt with this. It keeps its Pulitzer Prize.
Two massive genocides in the last century, you wouldn't find hell a lot about of it in the pages of The New York Times at the time. That's the kind of media that we're talking about.
HANNITY: That's what makes this book so good, because you bring it from its history to modern day. We're going to continue The Great One, Mark Levin, on freedom of the press. By the way amazon.com bookstores everywhere, it's up on my website, hannity.com.
When we come back, studies showing the Anti-Trump media bias is real. And one thing is for sure, the biased press never treated Obama this way, just the opposite. We'll ask Mark Levin about this as we continue tonight on Hannity.
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HANNITY: All right, as we continue tonight on Hannity, the book is called Unfreedom of the Press. Now, the relentless media attacks on the Trump Presidency are unlike pretty much anything we've ever seen.
Look at this, Media Research Center study, in his first year as President, 90 percent of the coverage Mark was talking about this on broadcast networks was negative for the Trump administration.
Let's compare this to the love the mainstream media showed President Obama. Remember, the thrill up their legs, just as he was getting started with Presidential politics. Let's take a trip down memory lane.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can see it in the crowd, the thrill, the hope.
(CROWD CHEERING)
How they surge to him. You're looking at an American political phenomenon.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are the equivalent of a rock star.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the bus ride along the snowy road to Lebanon, New Hampshire, I showed him this week's Newsweek hot off of the presses.
How does this feel of all the honors that have come your way?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The feeling people get, when they hear Barack Obama's speech, I thought this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Steady.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No seriously, it's a dramatic event.
TERRY MORAN, SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, ABC NEWS: I'd like to say that in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office.
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HANNITY: Step down. Oh, community organizer. We continue. This book is going to be a phenomenal resource. It literally traces the history of the press of America up to modern day. It's called the Unfreedom of the Press, The Great One, Mark Levin.
I want to ask you this question. Last segment, I brought up the Mueller witch hunt. Over 2 plus years, four investigations, same conclusion - there is no collusion. If they cared about collusion, we have Ukrainian collusion with Hillary to influence the 2016 campaign. Nobody's interested. If they cared about obstruction, well they might want to report on subpoenaed emails, deleted, bleach bid, hammers, devices, SIM cards.
They really cared about I Believe what Brett Kavanaugh in high school. Where are all the I Believers on the Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia? Then I ask you this. They got it wrong on Richard Jewell, they got it wrong on George Zimmerman, they got it wrong on Ferguson, Missouri, they got it wrong on Baltimore, Maryland, they got it wrong on Cambridge police lacrosse (ph), this Covington kid, they destroy - the only good news to come out of that is Lin Wood will destroy the press. They will be paying hundreds of millions of dollars.
LEVIN: The greatest, they got it wrong, is still in front of our faces, Russia collusion, and I'm saying they got it wrong.
HANNITY: On purpose.
LEVIN: But they knew they got it wrong. They will ride any car to take out this President. I have a section in the book, it's called collusion, abuse of power, and character because this is what they accuse the President of, collusion, abuse of power and character.
And I'll give another history lesson. Collusion, let's talk about collusion. I explained that Nancy Pelosi was colluding with a dictator in Syria when George Bush asked her not to. Her predecessor, one of them, Jim Wright, was colluding with the Nicaraguan communists when Ronald Reagan asked them not to.
Ted Kennedy has been colluding with the Soviet Union to try and defeat Ronald Reagan in his second term. The media utterly ignored that. He was still alive. There were no hearings, no Logan Act, no nothing. Right now, John Kerry is colluding with the Iranians to undermine the President of the United States. So we actually have real cases of collusion.
What about abuse of power? The last President before this President, the IRS refused to go after the Tea Party. The media blew it off. It was no big deal. He blew it off, he didn't know anything. The IRS was used by Franklin Roosevelt, I said earlier, against media outlets. It was used by JFK. JFK sat down with Ben Bradlee, then with Newsweek, but later with The Washington Post. He's considered iconic.
And Pierre Salinger, who was working for Kennedy, shared FBI files. Robert Kennedy agreed and agreed to order wiretaps of Martin Luther King. Lyndon Johnson wire tapped Hubert Humphrey, his Vice President, when he was trying to - here's what I want to get at, this is important. There's been abuses - uses of the IRS, of the FBI, to go after political opponents, to go after newspapers, to go after newspaper men.
Our President has done none of that, and yet you would think he's a dictator. You listen to MSNBC and Scarborough, I don't know how many times they compare him to a Nazi or to Hitler or those words come up in describing the President of the United States. You really have to be really unhinged.
And speaking of that, remember that period they were bringing the professor in from Yale and she and 26 others wrote a book about how the President of the United States - they never met the President of the United States - how he was mentally unhinged. They pulled the same thing on Barry Goldwater in 1964.
HANNITY: You write about that in the book.
LEVIN: I give all the history. This isn't news. But these people made news. They pushed them out there. The New York Times runs an anonymous op-ed. It's a fake event and then--
HANNITY: Let me ask you this.
LEVIN: --there's a week's worth of news on an anonymous op-ed.
HANNITY: Mark, this is important because for two-plus years, they have peddled lies and conspiracy theories. Again, when you take it to what we have reported, Hillary rigged the primary, they rigged an investigation, where the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible, as well as obstruction, nothing.
Then they tried to use a Phony Russian Dossier as a means of spying on the Trump campaign, taking away the constitutional rights. They trying to rig that election, then trying to bludgeon the President with a phony - ironically a phony Russian Dossier bought and paid for by Clinton, even The New York Times suggesting now that it could very well have been Russian disinformation from the beginning.
So 99.9% of the media never touched it. They're still not going after what is - if we have that kind of abuse of power, rigged investigations, rigged elections, unmasking, surveilling, abusing the constitutional rights of American citizens, you once said we're in a post-constitutional America in an earlier book, you put that together with this book and this experience? What are we, a Banana Republic?
LEVIN: This book focuses not so much on this President, even though there's examples of what's going on with this President and Russia collusion and so forth, because it's crucial, because it's taking place as we live in. It focuses on the media.
There's a difference between media and a free press. We don't have a free press. It's not because Donald Trump calls them names or the government is interfering, it's because they're not free. A free press would give us the closest thing to news that they can. They're not doing that. They're giving us propaganda and pseudo-events.
HANNITY: Alright. It's unbelievable. You will not put this book down once you start it, Unfreedom of the Press, the Great One, Mark Levin. And when we come back, he'll explain more about what this book is about, why it's important, and how the media works in conjunction with the Democratic Party, straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TRACE GALLAGHER, CORRESPONDENT: Live from America's News Headquarters, I'm Trace Gallagher. At least 177 male students at Ohio State were sexually assaulted by a team doctor from the 1970s through the 1990s. Dr. Richard Strauss treated athletes in at least 16 sports, as well as in the student health center and an off campus clinic.
The investigation found many people at Ohio State knew of complaints and concerns, but failed to investigate or take action. Strauss killed himself in 2005.
A police officer in Texas was fired today after being charged with criminally negligent homicide for shooting and killing a man at a traffic stop last September. The Arlington Police Department announced the firing in a statement that said Officer Bau Tran violated department policy, which led to the death of 24-year-old O'Shae Terry. Body camera video shows Tran firing at Terry, as Terry began to drive away.
I'm Trace Gallagher, now back to Hannity.
HANNITY: Alright, now on his brand new book by the way, Unfreedom of the Press, The Great One, Mark Levin, digs deep into the dark history of The New York Times, Washington Post. Recently, New York Times has been grappling with an anti-Semitism scandal. Weeks ago, the so-called paper of record, they were forced to answer for why two anti-Semitic cartoons appeared in the paper's international edition just days apart.
Now even more disturbing, is how anti-Semitism and the hatred for Israel all -- not only is it spreading all across Europe, but it's becoming more and more mainstream in this new radical extreme Democratic Socialist Party, as Congresswoman Omar and Talib have now repeatedly come under fire for anti-Semitic remarks.
Much of the media, of course, covers for them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There have been anti-Muslim, you know, terrible comments as well.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: American Muslims, above all, have been the victims of this sort of questioning of their loyalty to the country.
MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I never experienced open anti- Semitism until Donald Trump started running for President.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Republicans are trying to use this as a wedge issue
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She has been the target of some anti-Muslim attacks from outside folks as well. And there is this general feeling of how hard do you want to pile on one freshman Congresswoman.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: We continue the brand new book out by The Great One, Mark Levin, Unfreedom of the Press. I'm going to take a slight disagreement with you on one thing. As you think they know what they're doing, I think they are so ideologically blind that they wake up with this psychotic rage to hate the President that they have so convinced themselves that they're right. I think Comey and all these Deep State people that abuse their power, they think they're super patriots, Mark.
LEVIN: There is no question that anything that's evil out there somehow they try and tie the President into it. But this is particularly pernicious. The Democrat Party has a growing tolerance for anti-Semitic bigotry. Nancy Pelosi would not propose a resolution that specifically named Omar as the anti-Semite she repeatedly proves that she is. Talib--
HANNITY: You see the Imam that she allowed in Congress?
LEVIN: The history is out there for everyone to see. Talib, same thing. Keith Ellison, same thing, and their closeness with Farrakhan and Sharpton in my opinion, same thing. The Democratic Party has a high tolerance for it. So then the media has a high tolerance for it.
In other words, you found them and you just pointed out how they were covering up. Now, if you said it was (inaudible) they wouldn't have any tolerance for it, we don't. But because these are Democrats, because they are the first two women Muslims in the house, they're going to give them the pass, and they largely have given them the pass.
And again I want to repeat, The New York Times did not cover the Holocaust in any significant way. The New York Times has a history of this, and I explain this in the book. And let me repeat this. When Hamas fires missiles into Israel, somehow The New York Times always winds up on the side of Hamas. The New York Times did this unbelievable story one Christmas, I think it was last Christmas, about how Hezbollah in Lebanon was celebrating Christmas with the Christians.
Hezbollah is a brutal militia terrorist wing of Iran, has killed American soldiers, American marines, and The New York Times puffs them up. And then they start attacking the President for turning this into a political issue. It's not a political issue. The media have got to come to grips. They're destroying themselves. People are going elsewhere. There's new technologies, there's going to be more technologies.
And the problem is, they won't police themselves, and more over, I think we're at the lowest point in American history of freedom of the press, thanks to the press. The press has effectively been hijacked by a progressive movement, by a Democratic Party. Look, I explained in the book. Look at all of the Democrats, who worked in government and now work in the press or vice versa.
Look at all the Democrats who worked in the press and worked in the Obama administration. You'll have some in this network who are Republicans who have done it, it doesn't come anywhere near the army of Democrats who now become so-called journalists and vice versa.
HANNITY: An hour doesn't do this justice. I'd urge everybody, you will want to read this. I read it cover-to-cover. Read it in less than a day. I learned so much about the history of all of this. But I do think you're right about one thing, the great story that will come out of this is the emergence of new media. I'd like to say we do their job for them. The job they're supposed to do.
We do reporting, we do investigative reporting, we also give opinion, we talk about sports sometimes. Yes, we're an entire newspaper. But we're upfront about being opinionated. Big difference between us and them is they lie and they pretend to be something that they're not. Great One, you've outdone yourself here.
LEVIN: Thank you so much.
HANNITY: Great book, Unfreedom of the Press. Book stores everywhere, amazon.com. We'll have closing moments on this special edition of Hannity right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: Alright, unfortunately that is all the time we have left for this evening. By the way, you can catch Mark's show every Sunday night, number one show on cable 10 pm right here on the Fox News Channel, "Life, Liberty & Levin." Don't forget his radio show, nationally syndicated.
This book, Unfreedom of the Press, you're going to learn the history, you're going to bring it to modern day and you're going to see it will open your eyes as to what fake news is doing to the country. Anyways, as always, we will never be the destroy-Trump media mob. Let not your heart be troubled. We hope you have a great night. I'll see you soon.
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