‘She’s Probably 12 Years Old!’ Mark Levin Lashes Out Wildly Over Mediaite Fact-Check with a String of Hilariously Bad Ad Hominem Attacks

It would be insane for Mediaite to hire a 12-year-old who never read any books and flunked out of science class to write complex commentary, so it’s a good thing that didn’t actually happen. But listeners to The Mark Levin Show might have wondered if that was the policy, based on Monday’s episode.

Right-wing pundit Mark Levin did not appreciate your friendly neighborhood Mediaite contributing editor fact-checking Sunday’s opener of Life, Liberty & Levin, dropping a nearly 10-minute monologue Monday that mostly consisted of him reading lines from the article punctuated with a string of ad hominem attacks and failing to ever refute the key points I made.

On his Fox show Sunday night, Levin began with what I characterized as “a rant about President Joe Biden’s energy policies.” After refreshing my memory of Levin’s rhetorical style and sitting through ten minutes of his radio show, it seems that this is just his default speaking tone so perhaps I could be wrong that it was a “rant,” and I apologize if I was wrong about that.

I was not wrong about the core substance of my article. Levin spent several minutes Sunday criticizing Biden administration policies with a discussion of greenhouse gases, focusing on carbon dioxide, which he declared was “not a pollutant,” because it occurred naturally in the environment and was essential for life.

Without carbon dioxide, we die. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant…It is oxygen for plants. In essence, plants use carbon dioxide to create oxygen for you and me…they suck up our carbon dioxide and push out oxygen.

In my article, I included the video of Levin’s commentary and a complete transcript of the relevant section, and then pointed out Levin had neglected to mention that excess carbon dioxide is also generated through human activity, “including treatment of solid waste, chemical processes like manufacturing cement and fertilizer, and of course from burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil.”

Additionally, Levin omitted mention of the other three main types of greenhouse gases besides carbon dioxide — nitrous oxide, methane, and fluorinated gases, especially hydrofluorocarbons — that are generated through human-made industrial processes or generated naturally but with a direct connection to human activity, such as the methane emitted from livestock, agricultural practices, and decay of solid waste in landfills.

I cited several conservative sources to refute Levin’s oversimplified definition and noted that just because carbon dioxide is natural does not mean it cannot be a pollutant or cause harm.

In other words, portraying carbon dioxide as simply “oxygen for plants!” and leaving out other human-generated types of greenhouse gases was, well, gaslighting.

I’m not on board w/the “sky is falling” rhetoric from many liberal environmental activists but Levin’s wild misrepresentation about greenhouse gases is, well, gaslighting. Innovation is key to environmental challenges. Lying about the problem doesn’t help.https://t.co/1hBRNJiYMa

— Sarah Rumpf 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@rumpfshaker) July 18, 2022

Levin is correct that plants use carbon dioxide to create oxygen — I never said he wasn’t — but he uses that fact to misrepresent the overall issue of greenhouse gases and ridicule anyone who believes there are valid reasons to be concerned about them.

In the clip posted above, Levin reads from my article, ending virtually every sentence with some sort of ad hominem insult. Because Levin seems to have trouble with the definitions of words, I’ll note that “ad hominem” is Latin meaning “to the person,” and refers to an argument where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other aspect of their opponent rather than address the substance of the opponent’s argument. Anyone who’s been on Twitter ever in their life will recognize the unfortunate popularity of this tactic in our current political discourse.

Levin began his show by mispronouncing my name as “Sarah Rump,” a childish taunt that I learned to shrug off on the grade school playground and can only laugh when it’s deployed by a lawyer who thinks it substitutes for logical argument. The last name is German, the “F’ is included in the phonetically correct pronunciation, and it means “trunk,” taking on the same meanings that word does in English (trunk of a tree, car trunk, torso of the body, etc.).

An additional sampling of Levin’s insults, including bizarre speculation I’m 12 years old or transgender:

Sarah Rump writes for Mediaite — nobody really knows why Mediaite exists. It’s sort of the little sister to Media Matters.

Sarah Rump, I don’t know who she is, she’s probably 12 years old.

See, this is a young lady, I guess a birthing person. I don’t know, maybe transitioning, who can tell?

Utterly ignorant, has never read my books. Knows nothing about carbon dioxide. Nothing. Maybe she missed science during third grade — the whole stuff with plants, carbon dioxide, creating oxygen.

Corrupt and stupid.

That’s my point, dimwit.

[Responding to my point that he omitted 3 of 4 types of greenhouse gases] I have 10 minutes there,  young lady. You are a young lady. A lady and young, I guess.

[In response to a NASA study I linked] Who cares?

[In response to a quote from a conservative environmental policy expert] Who cares? …Is that the stupidest damn thing you’ve ever heard?

[In response to links to multiple studies on the effects of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide on plants]: Oh, well, that’s good. It’s about time they’re studying it…Ah, bull crap. Oh, crap.

Dim-witted, is what it’s called.

Levin concluded by mentioning the line where I wrote that I had reached out to Fox News for comment but did not receive a response.

“Now I’ve given you the response, moron!” he said. “This has to be one of the dumbest essays I’ve ever read. I don’t know who this Sarah Rump is. Don’t really give a damn.”

He spent 10 minutes calling me a moron and dimwit and saying he didn’t know who I am, when a very easy Google search almost always brings up my Twitter account @rumpfshaker as the first link, which shows my job here and, just like Levin, I graduated from law school.

One of the things they teach you in law school is how to analyze your opponent’s argument and offer a rebuttal. Reading a line from my article and calling me a “dimwit” doesn’t actually refute what I wrote. Repeatedly dismissing someone as “young lady” not only isn’t an actual argument but likely to invite a judge admonishing you for lack of professionalism (as happened at least once during the early years of my legal practice).

Bless your heart, Mr. Levin, but I’m a proud member of Generation X and it’s weird you called me a 12-year-old, I’m not transgender and that was also a weird thing to say, I did very well in math and science classes throughout my education, I know plants need carbon dioxide to create oxygen and never said they didn’t, and I have read your books and am pretty sure I still have at least one of them in a box in the garage.

Again, not once did Levin bother to address my main point: the way he described carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases was deliberately incomplete and emphasized only the benign aspects. As I wrote, “the issue isn’t all these lovely trees gently wafting oxygen down upon us, but rather the extra carbon dioxide generated by human activity since the Industrial Revolution.”

It would be easy to wrap up my closing argument with a cheap joke about greenhouse gases not being the only thing that creates hot air. Or even throwing the name mockery back and telling Levin to kiss my Rumpf. But I prefer to use actual facts and logical reasoning when I’m refuting an argument. Which, in this case, seems to be exactly what set him off.

Not bad for a dimwit.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.