Peloni & David Fieldstone
Mark opened his Saturday, January 31 show – by explaining that recent unrest and confrontations with federal immigration authorities in the US, including the recently fatal shooting of (nurse) Alex Pretti, are clearly not spontaneous events, but rather organized efforts driven by ideological groups aligned with the Democratic Party.
He also notes that these groups deliberately obstruct federal law enforcement, particularly ICE, and that such interference with law enforcement constitutes serious federal crimes, rather than protected rights of free speech. Mark goes on to further explain that individuals who bring weapons to protests, interfere with arrests, or obstruct officers – are knowingly escalating dangerous situations that can result in arrest, injury, or death.
Additionally, Mark makes a central focus of his monologue – around the fact that American citizens have a fundamental right to safe and secure communities – and to expect federal, state, and local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws. Hence, when governors and mayors order law enforcement to stand down, they are effectively shielding criminal illegal aliens – while endangering citizens and undermining the rule of law. Mark explains further that sanctuary cities and states are actually unconstitutionally – for the very reason that they violate the Supremacy Clause – by refusing to comply with federal immigration law. From here, Mark reminds us of the fact that federal immigration law has long provided broad authority to apprehend and deport illegal aliens based on laws passed by both political parties – and that these laws have been repeatedly upheld in Supreme Court Rulings over the years. Ignoring these legal and political norms, however, the Democratic Party adopted a two-fold strategy – whereby they would open the borders and then act to prevent deportations of the resulting illegal alien population. By doing so, they have increased their political power through shifts in demographics which have led to changes in House seats and electoral votes in the Democrats’ favor – as a consequence of this strategy.
Mark concludes this segment by noting the deliberate policy choices made by the Biden administration – including ending Remain in Mexico, terminating Title 42, expanding mass parole, weakening enforcement, and broadening welfare access – have specifically come to empower radical groups, fueling violence against federal officers, and subordinating national security and public safety in favor of Democratic partisan political goals.
In his second segment, Mark interviews Hans von Spakovsky – who reminds us that immigration enforcement has come to be undermined by widespread confusion about due process vs the nature of immigration law. Von Spakovsky explains that immigration proceedings are civil, not criminal. So consequently, illegal aliens do not receive the same constitutional protections as criminal defendants, and that any level of due process owed to them is far more limited. He highlights the fact that deportation without full hearings for recent arrivals or those who commit specified crimes is the legal norm. Also, immigration judges are administrative officials within the executive branch whose decisions can be reviewed or reversed by the federal attorney general. Hence, federal district courts lack jurisdiction to block deportations, despite the fact that partisan judges have been ignoring this fact. Mark and von Spakovsky also stress that visas only provide temporary privileges rather than rights, and that visa holders do not enjoy full First Amendment protections. They also agree that the resulting judicial overreach and political mischaracterization of these facts for political gain – have too significantly weakened immigration enforcement and the rule of law in the USA.
In the concluding segment, Levin talks with Gordon Chang, who explains that Iran and China represent an interlinked threat to U.S. security. Chang goes on to raise the point that the Iranian regime largely functions as a Chinese proxy. Iran’s military and economic survival is heavily dependent upon China – which also provides diplomatic cover, propaganda support, weapons assistance, and an economic lifeline by purchasing most of Iran’s oil exports. China has also worked to deter U.S. military action against Iran, underscoring the relevance of the of the survival of the Mullah’s regime to China . Chang also argues that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities are in large part a result of Chinese-enabled technology transfers, including also nuclear technology routed through Pakistan and missile systems originating in North Korea with Beijing’s approval. From here, the conversation shifts – to discuss China’s internal instability. Chang describes Xi Jinping’s recent purge of senior military officers, including experienced commanders opposed to invading Taiwan. This consolidation of power, he argues, raises the risk of conflict by replacing professional leadership with political loyalists willing to execute reckless orders. Meanwhile, China’s weakening economy further undermines regime stability and increases the danger of external aggression.
Mark opens his Sunday, February 1 show with an insightful look at Iran as rapidly becoming the “North Korea of the Middle East.” He notes that both nations are closed, totalitarian police states whose existence is primarily centered around the preservation of the respective regimes using repression tactics. Mark highlights that Iran is a nationwide concentration camp in which the government controls culture, communications, energy, and daily life, relying on torture prisons, mass killings, and terror to suppress its population in order to survive and maintain control. He condemns the relative silence of Western media and the growing normalization of this brutality, insisting the suffering inside Iran is quite real and escalating fast. Iran’s once-vibrant middle class has been hollowed out, civil liberties are virtually nonexistent, and the economy is collapsing under hyperinflation, unemployment, malnutrition, energy shortages, and currency free-fall, all of which are related to the regime’s dedication toward maintaining its terrorist operations and colonialist terror tentacles in the region and across the world.
Mark warns that diplomacy and negotiations have repeatedly failed to either contain or moderate Iran’s policies, drawing a direct parallel to decades of appeasement with North Korea that culminated in their developing nuclear and hydrogen weapons, as Western weakness made this reality possible. Mark goes on to emphasize that Iran will follow the same path unless decisively stopped, stressing that a regime willing to slaughter tens of thousands of its own citizens would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Western cities. Noting that the Iran’s Islamist ideology is a culture of death, openly committed to destroying the West, Mark asserts that Iran is currently weaker than ever, facing internal unrest and economic crisis, rendering the current circumstances into a rare window of opportunity to end the regime and defeat its desires of Western conquest once and for all. He contends that fears of escalation are overstated, since Iran is too internally consumed and strategically constrained to risk a major war. Calling for decisive military action aimed at the regime’s leadership and critical weapons infrastructure, Mark warns us that inaction will result in a nuclear-armed Iran backed by China, Russia, and North Korea. Mark closes this segment by characterizing the threat from Iran as being both a moral imperative and a matter of U.S. national security, explaining that eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat while it is vulnerable directly aligns with American values of life, liberty, and freedom. It would also reassert US dominance and leadership in a world where emerging peer competitors are looking to weaken the US and to compromise its allies.
In his second segment, Mark talks with Douglas Murray as they discuss the ongoing uprising in Iran and the West’s moral failure to respond. Mark opens by describing Iran as a modern concentration camp, where the regime has cut electricity and communications, rounded up protesters, and carried out mass killings, while Western media and leaders have largely lost interest in what can only be described as one of the most flagrant state organized public slaughters of our age, even if we were to accept the Iranian regime’s claims of the number of dead, which are estimated to be somewhere between 5-10% of the actual butcher’s bill for their public crackdown. Murray agrees with Mark, emphasizing that though the Iranian people have repeatedly risen against the theocratic regime since 1979, the recent protests have been unprecedented in scale while being met with extraordinary and unacceptable degrees of brutality and force. Tens of thousands of protesters, comprising student youths and elderly alike, as well as people from every aspect of those suffering under the regimes control, having been murdered by death squads organized and imported for the specific task of demonstrating the control and power of the Iranian regime over its people.
Murray further highlights the regime’s deliberate effort to conceal its crimes beyond its borders by shutting down the internet and power, hoping global attention would ultimately fade. He warns that the real danger is the West’s complicit willingness to acquiesce to ignore these outrages which should place the Iranian regime beyond the pale of all decent people. Mark contrasts the intense media focus on isolated incidents in the United States with the near silence surrounding the mass slaughter inside Iran, questioning how Western institutions can ignore such large-scale human suffering.
Murray attributes this imbalance to the dominant left-wing worldview which restricts its characterization of evil as being primarily associated by America and its allies, leaving it somewhere between being unable or unwilling to confront atrocities committed by non-Western regimes unless it can be blamed on Western imperialism. Murray entirely rejects this framing, explaining that Iran itself is a major imperial and colonial power, exporting terrorism across the Middle East, Europe, and even the Americas, including assassination attempts against U.S. officials.
The conversation turns to the Western inaction which has repeatedly been the response chosen to respond to Iran’s long record of killing American and allied troops, sponsoring militias in Iraq, threatening nuclear development, and carrying out provocations without consequences. Murray argues that decades of responses including appeasement of the current regime with money and other benefits have taught Iran that Western threats are empty, and that they would remain secure even following the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent protestors across the nation.
Murray suggests the regime may now face a different kind of opponent in President Trump who is willing to act, concluding that the mass murder of peaceful protesters should be enough to summon moral courage and decisive action. The Mullahs overseeing control of Iran hold no interest for their people whatsoever, and their Mahdi-driven Twelver ideology sees chaos and mayhem as being ultimately useful towards their Armageddonist belief system. The question which remains to be seen is whether Trump will provide the Mullahs the lifeline needed to survive the slaughter of tens of thousands of people, even as Trump assured these protestors that the US was ‘locked and loaded’ to support their voicing their protests against the current regime.
In the concluding segment, Mark talks with scholar and author Jonathan Turley about his new book, Rage and Revolution, which looks at how the US Revolution came to birth a Republic as opposed to some form of tyranny as was seen following the French Revolution, as just one example of revolutions in history leading towards less happy outcomes than did the American Revolution. In the second half of the book, Turley addresses the question of whether the US Republic is capable of surviving thru the 21st Century.
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