Mark Levin’s Alternate Universe

Jack HunterNovember 13, 2026

Mark Levin and reality have a complicated relationship.

This has been on full display recently in his crazed reaction to Republicans’ wipeout election loss, which was due largely to the Iran war—a conflict the neoconservative pundit has championed with unparalleled zeal.

“Everyone knows why we lost,” admitted Vice President J.D. Vance, blaming the war.

Well, not everyone.

Just before voters headed to the polls, Levin assured his viewers that if the GOP were to lose, it wouldn’t be “because of the Iran war.”

And after the GOP went down to its historic defeat, Levin claimed Iran “wasn’t even a big issue during this election.”

The data tell a different tale. Exit polls showed that 74 percent of voters said the Iran war was a crucial or major factor in their vote. A week before, Gallup reported that 77 percent of registered voters considered the war “extremely” or “very important” to their vote.

“It’s not my fault,” Levin cried.

“The GOP wipeout is absolutely the fault of Mark Levin and the Trump/Netanyahu Iran War,” noted the independent journalist Glenn Greenwald. “He knows it’s his fault which is why he’s crying that it isn’t.”

POLITICO reported in June that Levin was among a group of hawks that had been advising Trump on the war, including urging the president to resist a potential peace deal.

Despite this, for most of last week and this one, a wild-eyed Levin has lashed out at anyone who would dare say that the war he so avidly cheered cost Republicans the election. It had to be other issues instead, he fretted.

“Morning, Mark. You sound a little upset,” wrote the media personality Piers Morgan to Levin on the morning after the election. “[I]s it because America last night rejected the ruinous war-mongering, economy-shredding bullsh*t you’ve been spewing all year?”

“Sounds like I know what your fellow countrymen feel better than you,” the Englishman and Iran war critic said. “Maybe time to retire?”

But whether Levin retires or not, his complete detachment from reality is nothing new.

Mark’s most recent mania took me back to an earlier era, in which he was cheerleading for another Republican president and his disastrous Mideast conflict.

Almost twenty years ago, as Americans soured on George W. Bush’s venture in Iraq—which played a significant role in the election of Barack Obama—Mark Levin was in the cheer section for the war. Even as the scope of the tragedy became clear, he joined his neocon confreres in insisting that the war was undertaken in the service of a just cause, and that Bush was right to wage it even in the face of overwhelming popular opposition.

Just as today, war-lovers refused to let reality get in the way of their ultimate goal, manipulating language and attempting to gaslight the American people as to the character and costs of interventionism abroad.

In his 2009 book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, his early Obama era tome, Levin attempted to define a “conservative” foreign policy as distinctly “neo”: In other words, what Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had just done in Iraq and beyond.

This would include the Global War on Terror and all its fruits: endless military operations, torture of detainees, warrantless searches, and mass surveillance. All of which Levin endorsed.

I reviewed the book for Taki’s Magazine at the time, and couldn’t help but call out the absurdity of some of Levin’s framing of these issues. Especially his bizarre and repeated use of the word “Statist” (always capitalized) as a pejorative for progressives or civil libertarians who took issue with controversial legislation like the PATRIOT Act or the illegal act of waterboarding.

On the PATRIOT Act, Levin wrote,

The Statist has also opposed the interception of enemy communications, such as email and cell-phone contacts, without approval from a court. But his position is contrary to all legal precedent, historical practice and highly impractical, given the speed by which such communications occur.

On waterboarding Levin wrote, “The Statist has succeeded in characterizing something as torture that is not torture, for the purpose of banning its judicious use.”

It was pure neocon drivel that was so typical of the Bush-Cheney era.

Oppose the PATRIOT Act? “Statist!” Oppose torture? “Statist!” Oppose the war? You guessed it.

I wrote in my review—which reads pretty gently in retrospect, given the ridiculousness of what Levin was saying—that the idea of calling people “‘statists’ who question the constitutionality of the PATRIOT Act or the morality of torture makes zero sense.”

“If he were honest, Levin would concede that increasing government power, whether by allowing it to spy on citizens or the executive branch redefining interrogation methods to circumvent the law, [requires] inherently ‘statist’ measures that he just happens to believe are necessary,” I noted.

When I talked about my review on the air in my local talk radio job in Charleston, SC, in 2009, Levin wanted me fired (we worked for the same umbrella company). But that’s a story for another time.

The lesson here is that neoconservatives will ignore existing reality to fabricate any narrative that protects or promotes their agenda.

“Where is the actual evidence of widespread civil liberties abuses against American citizens? It is nonexistent,” Levin wrote of curtailing citizens’ civil liberties.

That line might read differently to conservatives today, who are in full revolt against intrusive Flock cameras. Civil liberty protections were also probably important to right-wingers who participated in the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protests, particularly those who might have been ensnared in punitive legal situations. Just ask the family of Brian Cole, Jr.

But in 2009 and before, sacrificing those liberties was a core part of the neoconservative Bush administration. You disagree? “Statist!”