Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/28/25 Mark Lynch on Why He’s Running to Unseat Lindsey Graham

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Scott brings Mark Lynch, who’s running to take Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat, about his campaign, his motivation for running, his stance on Israel and his chances for victory.    Discussed on the show: LynchForSenate.com Mark Lynch is a Republican running for Senate in South Carolina. Learn more about him and his campaign at LynchForSenate.com. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archive. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and x at scott horton show all right you guys introducing mark lynch he is a state senator from south carolina and he is running against lindsay graham in the primaries here trying to finally spare our country of

this menace welcome to show how you doing mark doing fine thank you for having me on scott uh very happy to have you here on the show with us today And this is something that I know a lot of people have been dreaming of for a very long time. And even wondering why this hasn't happened, why must the state of South Carolina continue to inflict this horrible man onto the rest of our society and the planet Earth for that matter? And you're finally willing to get out there and do something about it, huh? Yes, sir. Yep. All right. So tell us what's your motive for getting in this race. Well, I've been asked to get in. People met me when I ran for a state Senate seat back in 2020.

I've worked with these guys at the National Security consulting some of the best people in the country that are willing to risk their lives and fighting our evil terrorist and things in the United States and working with them being on their board and understanding a lot of that and running for a state Senate seat. I almost won. I lost by 5% back in 2020 and people have asked me to run again that they're looking for. for somebody that won't compromise, that has integrity and courage with the backbone that'll lead our state and help vote correctly, constitutionally, and keep us out of all these wars we keep getting into, and many other things that Lindsay's famous for. So my wife and I prayed about it, and this last summer started talking about it, and we made a decision back in February and filed with the Federal Election Commission in February. So it's on. We're running for the United States Senate. All right. So now, obviously, you're going to have a lot to say about Graham, who you're trying to spare us from. But you, of course, have your own agenda. So why don't you talk a little bit about what you would like to see and what you would like to do as the United States Senator? And then we'll get back to picking on Graham here.

Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the first things I would want to do, Scott, is form a Senate subcommittee to stop. and block and vet bills coming across our desk that are un-American, anti-American activities that don't line up with America First policies, especially like wars and things. You know, if it's not going to benefit us and it's not constitutional, then we need to stop it right there and not go any further with it. The other thing is get rid of all these unconstitutional agencies that we've allowed our employees in D.C. to form that are unconstitutional. They've gone outside of their enumerated powers and increased their government size over the people.

And it's costing us trillions of dollars. We're never going to get out of debt if we don't stop all the spending, the frivolous spending that we've allowed to go on. Another big deal that we would want to tackle, and a lot of people are talking about it finally, is getting rid of our property taxes. You know, if I own my car or my home, I don't need to pay somebody a protection. fee to keep it, you know, or you'll come take it from me. If I have a deed or a title to it, that's the end of it. I don't need to keep paying any more taxes. I'm glad that Trump has the tariffs going, and we can help fund our economy through tariffs, and it's leveling up to the

playing field where we can bring back American manufacturing back home again and employ Americans instead of farming out all of our production in our country overseas and losing our ability to make something especially our pharmacies overseas in china that needs to end you know we're selling a lot of our land to china in south carolina and we're losing our property and our farming capability and we got to stop that and keep our land here and bring back farming back into South Carolina and help our farmers in that in that perspective. There's so many things we have to tackle America's you know we're upside down and it's pretty easy to go on and on and on the list could be a hundred things because everything's

messed up. We've got a we've got a big problem and a lot of opportunities but one of my biggest things I'll attack and fight for is to end the murder of our children in the mother's wounds. We call it abortion. It's murder. You know, we've killed 63 plus million of our own children in this country. And I'm 100% pro-life. I'll do everything I can to continue to fight that and get abortion ended once and for all. On the national level. Yes. All right. Well, Well, so, this is a foreign policy show, so I don't want to really go over all of that stuff, but, you know, we're largely in agreement, if not in total agreement about a lot of those things. But I have to ask you about your position on Israel, because, of course, so much of America's foreign policy is warped around Israel's interests, which oftentimes are not in alignment with the interests of the United States of America. Right. For example, their enemies primarily in the Middle East are the Shiites, whereas it was the bin Ladenites, the radical edge of the Sunni movement that knocked our towers down and are a threat to the American people, not Hezbollah or any other Iranian forces. So, and this is something that, of course, has been at the heart of what's bad about Lindsey Graham is that he is not America first. He is Israel instead. And that has clearly been a major part of his motivation for supporting all these horrible.

Middle East Wars all this time. Now, obviously, you know, you're running in the Republican Party for the United States Senate. You must like Israel and want to be friends with Israel. But I'm just wondering, how far are you really willing to take that and as compared to Lindsey Graham? Yes. Well, Israel has a different definition today. And most people are not deep into it. they bring out the verses that are a little deceptive out of the Bible that no blessed are those who bless Israel and cursed are those who curse Israel and it it doesn't say that it's talking about Abraham and his descendants and the true Israel is God's people us those who are saved and you know it's not a location it's not a nation and Israel has been behind and deceptively funding a lot of the stuff that we have fought against, they were involved in starting it and funding and helping the Palestinians and all in Gaza and all of that. So I, you know, I support the true Israel, I mean, a real, a true Jew that's not a Zionist or a whatever. But,

you know, again, if this, if it's coming up against America and this deceptively, setting up Islamic terrorist stuff, then I'm obviously not going to help support that. Yeah. I won't. And I think I got what you meant when you said in supporting the Palestinians. Not that he is supporting the Palestinians, but he was supporting Hamas and foisting Hamas onto the Palestinians, really.

Right. Yeah. So I just want to clarify that. But yeah, that's a very good point. And I understand what you're saying very well there. And I think that, you know, obviously. you know, the United States of America over the long term, we want to be friends with everyone. And that was what Thomas Jefferson and George Washington said, is that we should have peace and commerce and honest friendship with all nations, but entangling alliances with none.

So it seems like he could be pretty pro-Israel in sentiment without that ever really translating into some kind of policy where the American people are now bound to serve the interests of some foreign country. That's a totally different concept than just being friends. That's right. We've got to protect our sovereignty here. Yeah. Well, I sure appreciate that sentiment. And it takes real courage, especially on the right. But you know what?

More and more, sir, it takes less and less courage to make these statements and take these positions on the right. And the recent polls say that by far a majority of Americans now sympathize more with the Palestinians. And it's even 50-50 on the right. So I don't know exactly what the numbers are in South Carolina. But, you know, as Colonel McGregor says, time wins more arguments than reason. And, you know, especially evangelical Christians have been promised. So many magical things that would happen if they would support Israel. I mean, they're supposed to get the rapture as their reward for supporting a Rockward

too. If you ask John Hagey and a lot of the Sunday morning preachers back 20 and 25 years ago, and those promises didn't pan out. And I think people are now looking at it like it's 2025. the millennium came and went. The end of the world didn't come. And so who was it who were pushing those lies and why should we believe in them anymore? And maybe we could just look at America's relationship with Israel through the eyes of national states on the planet Earth in these times rather than simply looking at them through the eyes of the ancient Bible or in future

prophecy coming true. But just look at them as another state on the planet like Canada. or England or France or Zimbabwe or anybody else. And when we can look at them in that much more reasonable light, I think, then we'll be able to make much more reasonable policies about how to move forward in our relationship with them. Yes. Yeah.

So that's good. And I'm glad to hear that you're willing to take that stand. And so now I'm really interested in what kind of reception you're getting in South Carolina. I can't stretch my mind enough to imagine that the people of South Carolina ever really. really loved or supported Lindsey Graham, right? He's been foisted on y'all from above the same way that Hamas has been foisted on the poor people of Palestine, right? You have to suffer the

indignity of having this guy claim to be your leader. So tell me that the people of your state are just sick and tired of this by now. Well, our polls that we did a couple of months ago tell us that 57% of the South Carolanians will not vote for Lindsey Graham again. They're finally in tune with his patterns and he comes to the right a little bit, you know, near election time and then the rest of the five and a half years, he's supporting the Democrat, far-left, radical left, crazy people. And his voting record proves it. He's got a 57% voting record constitutionally, lifetime voting record. So he's failing. And all four scorecards that the public can go and look up the voting record. He's below passing. And so people see that. They see what he was

doing, you know, promoting war again with Zelensky when Trump's trying to promote peace. Lindsey Graham's going over there like he's the Secretary of State and he's not he's not Marco Rubio. And finally Trump called him out on it and said, you need to be careful what you're saying. Watch your mouth over there, you know, because he's a war promoter. When we look on his election Commission ledger. You know, we saw all the millions of dollars that came in from Lockheed Martin and Boeing because, you know, they love him to go and keep endless wars going, sending our children into more wars, getting them blown up and killed so they can all make more money and keep the industrial war complex military factories running, supplying war products.

And, you know, everybody's tired of that. And it hadn't done a thing. thing for America and he's getting rich off of it and many other people are and um and war monger is his name that everybody's familiar with now and it's taken a while but the low educated voter has gotten educated in the last four years and they felt the pain and they've they've come out and they're they're finding out what's really going on yeah and so they're they're ready to remove him now yeah hang on just one second for me hey you guys this october mckell thorup is once again hosting the free expat money online summit this October 10th through 12th. Thorpe is a great dude. How do I know? Well, I toured ancient mine ruins with him in Mexico one time.

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Get to Scott Horton's show blend. Just click the link in the right-hand margin at Scott Horton.org. You know, there's such an important lesson from 2016. When Donald Trump went to the, went to South Carolina and debated, I believe, I forgot how many of it was many other Republicans. It was still like eight or ten of them in the primary race at that time. And Donald Trump came out and pointed at Jeb Bush and said, his brother lied us into war. And the audience was upset. And they even did questions from the audience.

And one of the guys got up and said, I served in the war. Did I just hear you right? I know you didn't just say that. And he backed down a little and goes, well, maybe they didn't deliberately lie, but they shouldn't have done it. And there were no weapons of mass destruction. And America First means we're not doing that anymore. And Jed Bush, I believe it was the same debate, completely stumbled and said, George Bush, my brother, he kept us safe. Remember the rubble from what a great job he did, keeping us safe?

And Trump just mocked him and laughed at him. And the media said that Trump's goose is cooked. You can't go to South Carolina and denounce the war. And the next day Donald Trump had in the primary there, I guess it wasn't the next day, but the polls show that he completely cleaned everybody's clocks. And then in the actual race there, he got, I think, more than a third or something. And all the other candidates split the other two thirds, right? Or he may have even won like 50%.

And all the other 10 candidates or 8 or 10 candidates. split the other 50%. He cleaned their clocks. Even though he was saying what was supposed to be verboten and was the kind of thing that supposedly would just hurt the war veterans of South Carolina's feelings and make them angry at him for saying that. But instead, it was just like with Ron Paul, they respected it because they knew it was true. And they had their own resentments over being lied into that war. They didn't want to just be patted on the head and told that no, it was all okay. They knew it wasn't okay. And so they wrapped. rallied around the guy who told them the uncomfortable thing that they didn't really want to hear,

but in hindsight, they really did want to hear and that they rallied around that level of honesty. So I think that's so important. And that was nine years ago. So I think by now, this is what you could be running on. That, like, Lindsey Graham is the war party, and we are putting an end to that. South Carolinians for, you know, peace and a responsible. foreign policy. And I bet you can get the war veteran Republicans of your state to rally around that message as opposed to his recklessness, right? Yeah. I mean, how many veterans, Scott, do we hear, you know, they end up saying, I'm here protecting my brother. We're covering each other's backs in this war. We don't know why we're over here. We're just trying to stay alive till we get home because there's no purpose in sight other than there's a lot of money being

made off another war that they've thrown us into. Yep. And that's just horrible. You know, ever since Vietnam forward, we've gone to all these wars for what, you know. Then we watched that ridiculous exodus out of Afghanistan, Biden led with ISIS leading it. We lost 13 men that day. And then we start letting terrorists come in to our states and act like they're refugees. And it's just, it's been a horrible thing. But, you know, I was watching some of your latest 10-hour interview.

uh today i've watched about an hour of it and this excellent i'm i'm you've got me hooked i'll be finishing it great um with all your great knowledge of all the history with all of this these topics we're talking about now but the you know a few points that you brought up that really uh were interesting other than the trillions trillions of dollars we've wasted and all of the lives but the men coming back home and we've been hearing about the suicide rates but you brought up a great point where they're getting on these drugs that it magnifies the the very symptoms and feelings they're having and is helping cause more suicides and they're getting addicted to these antidepressant drugs and the drug manufacturers are just raking it in off of that while our veterans are

coming home just struggling and you know we don't leave people behind in war but we're leaving leaving them behind when they get home right and the the devastation of what they've gone through and for no no real reason to be involved in war we you know surely we can all see that and i hope that that i can get into the united states senate and make a different with my vote and keep us from going to all these wars so fast you know lindsay's all about that and a lot of them are and um i think i think the veterans are a strong voice in that in that arena saying you know why were we even there and we weren't allowed to win and we we have too many rules of engagement you know they can't they can't go and do their job and they're not supported uh they're

just forgotten when they get back home it's horrible the collateral damage that continues from every war there like with a malnutrition you were talking about It went from 2% to 50% on the war like in Afghanistan for the native Afghanistan, Afghans there living there. It left them devastated too, you know. Yeah. And it's so important, you know, too much. Do you remember the representative Walter Jones from North Carolina? And he was the guy who had renamed French fries, Freedom Fries, back at the start of the war.

And then he changed his mind. He was a Catholic. and he repented and got down on his knees and prayed for forgiveness. And he realized how wrong he had been to support the war. And before he died, we had had a conversation where I thought it was so important to emphasize what you just said about how rough that this has all been for the people on the other side too. And Walter would always emphasize the hardship for American soldiers, which of course is

important and which is most important for us because we're Americans. And there are guys, and as you said, they're sent over there essentially trusting that they're doing the right thing and then are essentially betrayed by being forced into wars that, you know, that they don't really belong in or have a real role in. And but I was, I think I did convince him, but it was too late. He died very soon after this anyway, but I was trying to convince Walter Jones that like you have to mention from time to time too how bad this has been. for the Iraqis, for the Afghans, the Syrians and the Libyans and the Somalis and the rest because when you talk about the hardship for American soldiers, that can be spun the other way, that look at the valorous sacrifice that our men have made for the good of the people of Iraq, to help the people of Afghanistan, to enlighten the poor, downtrodden people of Libya

and Syria and all of this. And so then they're ultimately useless sacrifices. is spun as worthy and even worth replicating because of all the great benefits that we've brought to the people of these countries that we've attacked in the name of doing them good. And so it's important to emphasize, as you just did, that, yeah, no, the standard of living in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and the rest of these places is through the floor. It is the Christian communities, especially of Iraq and Syria, have been completely obliterated.

This is not okay what we've done. Our guys, as you said, their valorous sacrifice to protect each other in battle was not for any good in any larger sense at all, in any macro sense at all. We can respect them for their sacrifices

to protect each other. But as far as their officers and the political appointees who sent them into these battles? No, sir. None of this was right at all. And all of it was regrettable. And the people of the Middle East would have been so much better off too if we hadn't had done it. And it seemed like, you know, I convinced him of that, I think, because he was like, oh yeah, I see what you mean that when you only focus on the hardship of the soldiers, in a way, you kind of leave the,

say, the Bush administration's implication that still this was all for the good of the people whose countries we attacked. And so maybe the, as Bush put it to Cindy Sheehan, that her son's death, he died for a noble cause, right? That this was the right thing ultimately and that his sacrifice was worth it in that sense, when in fact, no, that's really not right, you know? Horrible. Yeah. Well, anyway, I'm sorry. I don't mean to just lecture you. I'm supposed to be interviewing you, but I just, I'm really excited to see that you're running and And I'm excited to see that, you know, the effect of your primary challenge to Lindsay Graham has, you know, in your state and in the broader culture. I mean, it really does come down to what does America first mean?

Does that just mean we're selfish jerks and get what we want? Or that means, no, defend America first and leave the world alone with a decent respect for the rest of mankind. No, we're not the bosses of them. And our government's jurisdiction is to protect our lives and liberty and not to. rule the rest of the world in this way. And I just think, you know, the time has come for this. This is the narrative. This is overwhelmingly the dominant narrative out here in the alternative media, which is now the dominant media in the country, even if it's not the dominant message in Congress and in Washington yet. But we're making great headway. And so I think that your run

is a great example of the progress we're making. I can't wait to see the results of the thing. Yes. Thank you, Scott. You know, people can go to lynchforsenet.com and most importantly, we love it when people say we're praying for your campaign. That's how we win this is on our knees. But go to our website at lynchforsenot.com to the viewers out there and sign up, help our campaign. We need volunteers to door knock, put signs out and get organized with our team managers out in the field. and then it takes money. You know, my wife and I are blessed.

Our business has been successful. We're in our 73rd year. My dad started it. I started running it 40 years ago. And our business has grown 35 times. We've been debt-free since 1999, personally and corporately. And, you know, my heart for our state and our country bleeds for what we've been going through. and I have the ability to get in here and do this now.

My son and my daughter are third generation. They're helping run the business so I can pursue this. And we've been blessed financially and we've pushed $5 million of our retirement fund. My wife and I have into this campaign to see it to show people we're committed to this. It's a big risk, but we're willing to do it. And I appreciate the voters out there that have encouraged. encouraged us to do this and for me to get involved and so we're in it and we're winning all over the state when we drive around and speak and present our platforms and excuse me and they're ready for somebody that has integrity that's a true conservative with a backbone that'll hold the line that can make a difference and honor God's principles and protect our God-given unalienable rights through the Constitution. And that's the only authority, you know, that I have as your employer.

Employee, I mean, y'all are the employer if I get in, is to protect your God-given unalienable rights and do what's best for America. And it's not that hard. It's pretty easy to look good if you're just willing to do the right thing. And that's what I'm known for in our communities and a leader in our business and our buying group that we belong to. and political activist agendas that we fought in the state. And we're making a difference. And we want to take that to D.C.

Awesome. Well, that just sounds great. And I wish you the very best of luck. It's really great to know that you're out there and fighting this good fight. Yes, sir. It was good to meet you at Ron Paul's 90th birthday event. I haven't started your book yet, but I got it. Provoked.

So I'm looking forward to reading it. Great. Well, really appreciate that. And tell us your website one more time. Lynch for Senate.com. Okay, that's great. Thank you so much for your time, Mark. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. God bless. Thanks for listening to Scott Horton Show, which can be heard on APS Radio News at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton Show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at libertarian institute.org.