Charlie Kirk warns against conservatives rooting for Sanders to be the Democrat nominee

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Charlie Kirk warns against conservatives rooting for Sanders to be the Democrat nominee

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk joins 'Life, Liberty & Levin' to discuss the 2020 race and his new book 'The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future.'

This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," March 1, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARK LEVIN, HOST: Hello America. I'm Mark Levin. This is "Life, Liberty & Levin."

We have a great guest, Charlie Kirk. How are you my friend?

CHARLIE KIRK, FOUNDER, TURNING POINT USA: Hi, Mark. thanks for having me.

LEVIN: You're known to our audience. Turning Point USA, but I wanted to have you here because these Bernie Sanders movement, we're told it to youth movement. We're told the Republicans might as well resign to the fact that the youth are going to go Democrat -- worse, socialist, and I want to explore this with you.

I think this is a very, very important topic, and you've also written a magnificent book, "The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas that Will Win the Future." And really it relates to the topic. So let's, let's jump in here.

First of all, I have said the conservatives better stop celebrating what the Democrats are going through with Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party is the biggest political party in the country.

The fact that there are a lot of people voting for a Marxist -- they can call him a Democratic socialist all they want. I know what he is. He knows I know what he is. He won't come and sit in that chair where you're sitting right now, so he and I can discuss it.

This is very troubling to me, and I don't think we should be rooting for Bernie Sanders to be the nominee for the Democratic Party, am I wrong?

KIRK: You're totally correct. In fact, when I go to conservative groups across the country, and I say, Bernie Sanders can be President of the United States, I'm usually met with scoff -- you know, people scoffing and dismissing it. No, it can happen.

When I visit college campuses, more so than almost anyone on the Conservative circuit. You know, Turning Point USA, we're on 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country. I'm getting daily, if not hourly, Intel reports of exactly what's happening on the ground.

And I can tell you that there is a base of supporters that can grow, you know, rather significantly ahead of the election that Bernie Sanders can capitalize on.

And look, I, for one don't want to go the way of the Democrats in 2016 and be just so dismissive of the other party nominee and say that person can't be President.

So we don't know if Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee or not. But we do know that his rise is fueled by a broken culture, and a culture that we as conservatives have not engaged in enough especially on college campuses.

The university system in particular, and the thousands of professors that occupy most of the History Department and the Humanities Department, have been teaching the next generation to hate our country and they have not been teaching them American history properly, if not at all, they've not been teaching them, the founding of our country.

And when you're not thankful for something, Mark, why would you want to conserve that something? If you're not thankful for our country, of course, you would want to support a revolution to overtake it. And it's rooted in no understanding of economics, no understanding of exactly what the idea of free actually means.

And so what I do every single day is to try to bring the ideas of freedom and liberty and the Constitution to these college campuses. And a little point of optimism on it, though, there's an extraordinary amount of young people that are waiting for this message to be heard, because they have been silenced by the intelligentsia, if you will, on college campuses that believe that there should only be one set of ideas on these university campuses.

LEVIN: So you seem to be saying, Charlie Kirk, that Bernie Sanders is the end result of what's been going on for decades in government schools, in colleges and universities with pretty much a monopoly of ideology, a monopoly of faculty ideologues, and that it's starting to have consequences -- serious consequences.

And you see Republicans and I see some who are in broadcast, and they -- they're actually giddy. Now, we don't know if Bernie Sanders will be the nominee, but the fact that we don't know, to me is problematic.

I posted something when I was in Israel, and I said, my fellow conservatives, what are you cheering about?

KIRK: I totally agree with you.

LEVIN: And not only that, he has moved the Democratic Party. And so have others -- AOC, Tlaib, Omar -- really fringe characters. They've moved the center of the Democratic Party, they've moved the center of the political debate. And this is something we have to battle and be aware of, is it not?

KIRK: Look, we have to understand that whatever happens on college campuses will soon happen in the Halls of Congress. And we should not be cheering on the rise of a Marxist in our country in any form, shape whatsoever.

We defeated communism when the Berlin Wall fell down, but then we fell asleep at the wheel and we've allowed the same Marxist ideas to infiltrate the minds of our most prized possession in our country, which is our young people.

And so you're exactly right, Mark, when you say that, we should not be celebrating the rise of a Marxist and you're all of a sudden seeing ideas that otherwise would be considered radical in the Democratic Party now become mainstream.

And so I get people -- people ask me all the time, what can we do about this? What can I do about the rise of socialism in our country? And you hit the nail on the head, it's government run schools that are the primary culprit for why this has happened.

Bernie Sanders is just a byproduct of a broken culture. He is exploiting a generation that has been trained to be victims. He is exploiting a generation and a populace that wants to take other people's money away. And that's -- it's very easy to be generous with other people's money.

In fact, what you and I have to communicate to the American people, liberty and freedom is actually a harder sell, if you will. It's harder to tell people to work harder or wake up earlier or metaphorically pull yourself up by the bootstraps.

Well, Bernie Sanders is talking about his student loan forgiveness, debt cancellation, universal and free healthcare.

LEVIN: You never have to get out of bed.

KIRK: That's right. And it's the work less get more free stuff mediocre agenda of the Democratic Party. And make no mistake, the socialist movement in this country is not going away if we defeat it at the ballot box in November. We have to defeat it.

No matter who the nominee is, they are going to have 40 to 50 percent of that party that are socialists.

The question I always ask people is, do you think America is going to be more or less socialist in 10 years? And the only correct answer to that question is what's happening in culture. What are students reading? Are they reading the Founding Fathers? Do they understand American history? Are they appreciative of this gift that we've been given from God?

And the answer is more times than often, no. And that's why we operate with a sense of urgency that we do at Turning Point USA. Because we have been winning politically as conservatives over the last 10 or 15 years, but we've been losing tragically culturally.

LEVIN: And you look at this progressive movement, which is really the child of Marxism, Hegelism, Rousseauism pushed over a hundred years ago, by the likes of Woodrow Wilson, and John Dewey, Theodore Roosevelt, and others.

You can see it has devoured one institution after another -- the media. The media work from the perspective of the left, social activists, as progressives, you see it every day. You see it on their Sunday shows. You look at Hollywood, same thing.

But our public schools that's where the targeting is taking place. Don't teach math without teaching it in a social setting. Don't teach chemistry without teaching it in a social setting, a social engineering setting. And it has an impact on society at some point.

Has the progressive movement, the radical, progressive movement -- well, there was some resistance in the Democratic Party. You had some moderates, some so-called centrist. Has it devoured that party now?

KIRK: I hope not. I mean, actually, for the good of the country, we should want at least moderate Democrats to have a voice, and there's nothing good for the future of our Republic, this gift that we've been given to have the opposition party, go full Rousseauan and Marxist.

I'm so glad you mentioned Rousseau because he was the gateway to Karl Marx. And Plato was really the gateway to Rousseau and what the big conversation is --

LEVIN: You are well-read, the Republicans and so forth. Go ahead.

KIRK: Thank you and Aristotle and Plato who of course was the age-old student and teacher dynamic, of course Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle. But Aristotle disagreed with Plato on one fundamental thing -- he disagreed on a lot -- which is, is private property a good thing or a bad thing? Plato said, bad thing. Get rid of private property.

Plato also argued against the nuclear family. Aristotle said, no, actually, I think private property serves a role. I think that if you try to take people's stuff away, all of a sudden, you're going to take away their meaning and their ability to pass on wealth and ideas to the next generation. This divide between Aristotle and Plato is playing out today in our politics.

And we have to understand that Bernie Sanders does not believe private property is a right. And we kind of just get away from this as conservatives. We don't mention that in the original drafts of some of our founding documents. It was life, liberty, and private property. And you informed me this at a young age by listening to your radio show.

Now why is that important? Well, if you don't believe that being able to own private property is a right, well, then, of course, we can take away one sixth of the American economy and healthcare.

If you don't believe private property is a right, then you actually don't own your own speech.

LEVIN: This is a great point. And you know, Madison did an entire essay on private property, how it's more than physical and material. Private property is what's in your head and private property is what you have to say. Private property is crucial.

And the reason why the left rejects private property is it's one of the barriers against their agenda, against their ideology. And that's why they attack it constantly.

They don't care about billionaires because they're really attacking the so- called middle class.

KIRK: That's exactly right.

LEVIN: It's the middle class, whose wealth is redistributed, who is controlled with their healthcare, and all the rest of it. They can talk about billionaires all they want.

KIRK: That's right. Well, and going back to Rousseau to kind of complete the point. He was one of the most amazing hypocrites in philosophical history.

He was someone that argued that private property was the worst thing ever, yet, he lived like a plutocrat and as essentially part of the one percent.

And so to your point, you have people in the so-called ruling class that are arguing for Marxism, what they're really arguing for is more power and control for themselves. They actually don't want to live under the very proposals that they are offering to the populace or offering to the people -- they are offering to the citizenry.

And so what I think is so instrumental here, though, is if the left had their way, what would they allow in terms of private property? Because they would take our guns away. They would take our speech away. They would take our right to privacy away and the Fourth Amendment.

And so this is the fundamental disagreement right now, where, if any journalists had an ounce of integrity, they would look Senator Sanders in the eye and they'd say, do you believe private property is a right? And he would probably tried to dance away from it, but eventually he would say no. And that's the core debate that's happening right now.

LEVIN: And what is private property? Private property is the minimum facilitation of your physical and intellectual labor.

KIRK: Yes.

LEVIN: You get up in the morning -- most of us. You work and you go to bed at night. You get up in the morning, you do it over and over again.

Your existence on the planet as a human being is linked to what you create, to what you develop -- that is the manifestation of your liberty, of your human being.

So somebody steps in and says, you know what? You don't have the right to this and we're going to redistribute that, and so forth and so on. Now, what they're saying is, I'm going to attack your individualism and your liberty, no?

KIRK: That's exactly right. And John Locke taught us this. And John Locke was one of the philosophical inspirations of the American founding, and he moved us forward hundreds of years, philosophically and brought us right up to the precipice of the American Revolution, where he had the correct and brilliant revelation that everything you think and everything that you believe and everything you invest in as a human being, is your own property.

And the left actually hijacks this language against us. They use it incorrectly when talking about life, in talking about abortion, they say, well, it's your body, your choice. Well, that's a deeper discussion for a different time.

However, what they're trying to say, they're trying to play on the tendency of young people to want to be free. They're arguing that human beings should have sovereignty over their own choices. That's really what they're getting at, which is actually a Lockean natural rights argument for governance. That our rights come from God, not from government.

Bernie Sanders doesn't believe rights come from God. I don't even know if he believes in God. And that's also very important point, which is the left as it's becoming more and more Marxist, it is increasingly become more secular.

LEVIN: We'll get into more of this in a moment. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Welcome back, Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA. A great book, "The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas that Will Win the Future," which we're going to get to in a minute because it's relevant to what we're talking about. Mark, a subject so heavy.

Yes, it is. Because we need to get into this and if we don't do it, who will? Right, Charlie?

KIRK: Yes.

LEVIN: This word, liberty. When you hear and it's not just Sanders, you hear the squad. You hear the left, you hear the media talk about liberty. They define liberty through the guise of government programs, welfare, redistribution of wealth, wealth tax, free education free this -- that's not liberty.

At some point that's tyranny because you're stealing from other people, and not just billionaires. We don't have enough billionaires to fund all this. You're stealing it from men and women who get up every morning and work for a living.

This word liberty has been hijacked, too, like the phrase democratic socialism. There's no such thing. You're either a socialist Marxist or you're not. What does liberty mean to people who really understand and believe in liberty?

KIRK: For those of us that understand what that word means and not the misrepresented part of it, it means that first and foremost, we have natural rights from our Creator, the right to your unconsciousness, the right to your decisions, the right to make good decisions and bad decisions, going back to the idea of private property.

But also that idea of liberty is quite honestly a new idea governmentally in the last couple of hundred years. Very few societies actually allowed citizens to have liberty in human history.

In fact, the norm was typically the absence of liberty. The norm was tyranny. The norm was a permanent serf class, and a despot dictator or ruler exploiting the citizenry, and people dying for some war, probably by the age of 30 or 35.

When liberty came around, not just economic liberty or personal liberty. You either have liberty or you don't. You don't get to pick and choose what kind of liberty you want. It's not some sort of buffet option.

But that year of 1776 was so important not just because of the Declaration of Independence, but also because of the "Wealth of Nations" written by Adam Smith, and he did not create or invent capitalism, but he observed it. One can say he almost discovered it, and he was asking the question, why are certain countries richer than others?

It was -- basically the title is not "Wealth of Nations," it's an inquiry into the cause of wealth of nations because he was so curious as to why certain countries and certain areas specifically in Scotland where we got the Scottish Enlightenment were doing so much better than others.

And what he found and what he realized and concluded, is this word liberty where people were allowed to make choices, people's lives actually got better.

Here's the problem with liberty, though, is that liberty breeds apathy, and one of our genius Founding Fathers articulated that, which is when people have liberty, over a couple of generations, you're going to have hierarchies be created.

So let's pretend, Mark, that there actually was enough money to confiscate from all the billionaires. It still wouldn't be moral. It still wouldn't be correct, and that would be a violation of the tenet of liberty.

Because in order for them to get that wealth, they actually had to trade voluntarily with other people to make themselves rich and people equally as rich along the way.

LEVIN: Very well put. You have the Scottish Enlightenment, the English Enlightenment, the French Enlightenment, the German Enlightenment -- all within a couple hundred year period.

And this modern notion of Marxism, call it what you will, is a throwback. Really pre-enlightenment.

KIRK: That's correct.

LEVIN: Really think about this? How much intelligence does it take to steal stuff from people?

KIRK: It's --

LEVIN: How much intelligence does it take to create these phony matrixes of these programs? You'll get free healthcare and healthcare as a right. These are fortune cookie statements.

And when was the first time, let alone the last time Bernie Sanders gave a speech for 20 or 30 minutes condemning a regressive genocidal communist regime? Just a 20 or 30 minutes speech. I can show you 20 or 30 minutes speech where he is trashing America.

KIRK: That's right.

LEVIN: He says America is racist from top to bottom. America isn't a concept. We're Americans. We're people. It's not a toaster.

So that means the American people are racist from top to bottom. No, we're not.

We have people of color, mostly trying to pour into the United States, to leave places of color, to leave their cultures, to leave their countries to come into America that's racist from top to bottom? What do you make of this?

KIRK: It is one of the great lies and it's taught in our university system and what it does is it creates self-loathing, self-loathing among students in their view of America, because if you believe America is a racist, bigoted, homophobic, backwards looking country, of course, you would want to try to create a revolution within that country.

This lie that America is a racist country is so perverse and it's so widespread. We are the least racist multiethnic, multilingual country ever to exist in the history of the world.

We have assimilated successfully immigrants from every single country from every single corner from around the world. America voluntarily takes in about half of the world's immigrants every single year.

If America was so racist, why do the caravan go north for America, not south for Venezuela? To your point, there are people from all sorts of different backgrounds that would give anything to be able to come into this country and that goes back to the American Trinity.

The phrase, liberty -- In God We Trust, E Pluribus Unum -- to use a phrase for my friend, Dennis Prager. E Pluribus Unum is the Latin phrase, out of many one. This country is not founded on a skin color. It was not even founded on a specific religion.

Instead, it was founded an idea that it doesn't matter where you come from, but you can come here for opportunity and yes, liberty, not for free stuff and not to covet what other people have.

LEVIN: To circle back, for people who are interested in reading John Locke and "The Second Treatise" and so forth, he said, I hope we're not losing everybody out there, but he said when he was challenged, these ideas you have, where do they exist? They said, America.

KIRK: Yes.

LEVIN: He said America is a clean slate. America is and was a clean slate. It wasn't part of Europe. It wasn't part of Africa. It wasn't part of the Middle East. It wasn't part of Asia.

America, as Reagan would call it, a shining city on the hill.

KIRK: Yes.

LEVIN: That's what it is. So when Bernie Sanders -- it's not just Bernie Sanders, it's all the leaders of the Democratic Party and even some Republicans, when they point to European systems, I think to myself,, shouldn't Europe be pointing to us?

KIRK: That's right.

LEVIN: Why are we pointing to European systems? Is the French healthcare system to die for? Yes, pretty much. The British healthcare system, the dentist after 10 months, they've hit their quota and you can see it, they stop. And you can go on and on and on.

In America, you can be an illegal immigrant. Just come into this country, walk into the emergency room and get full care. What is it about America that Bernie Sanders and his ilk hate so much? That's the question I want to ask you when we return. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AISHAH HASNIE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: This is a Fox News Alert. I'm Aishah Hasnie in New York.

Two days to go until Super Tuesday, but Pete Buttigieg will not be competing. Mayor Pete has suspended his race for the presidential nomination after failing to notch enough wins in the early contest necessary to keep his bid moving forward.

He is expected to address a crowd of pretty disappointed supporters in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana just minutes from now and we will watch that for you right now.

In the meantime, Buddha judge bursting onto the scene with a blitz of national media and impressive fundraising just a year ago becoming the first openly gay top contender for a major American party nomination.

His departure from the race, reflecting the growing pressures among more moderate Democrats to consolidate in an effort to blunt the rise of Bernie Sanders, who Buttigieg has said is too liberal to be elected.

I'm Aishah Hasnie. We now go back to "Life, Liberty & Levin."

LEVIN: Welcome back. Charlie Kirk. Let's dig even further.

KIRK: Sure.

LEVIN: The American Revolution, the French Revolution, they were completely different revolutions. One had a real purpose and the purpose of the American Revolution wasn't to destroy society. It was to embrace the principles that these colonists believed in and to throw off a wretched monarchy.

And you have the French Revolution. The purpose of which was to fundamentally transform their society. Destroy it top to bottom. You have 10 years of terrorism in the French Revolution. Explain the difference.

KIRK: Well, the philosophical difference was one was based in liberty, and the other was based in a form of status collectivist, secular, utopian ideal.

The false promise of utopia is something that the left has been using for thousands of years and the French Revolution was no different. When they took power in France, they literally abolished time. They wanted to restart the calendar and get rid of the agrarian base calendar because they said all history before us is irrelevant. We're going to start history now.

LEVIN: What does that sound like by the way?

KIRK: It sounds quite similar to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying everyone before us has done everything wrong before us.

LEVIN: It sounds like Marx.

KIRK: It sounds like Karl Marx. It's the exact same sort of hubris and lack of respect for the thinkers and the sacrifice of people proceeding you.

The founding fathers were appreciating the sacrifice of the religious liberty, Judeo Christian values of the colonies. You have to understand that the people that came to America and founded the colonies originally, they left seeking liberty and freedom and put their entire life on the line.

They could have died on the voyage over or they could have died of disease. There was no guarantee it would have worked out for them.

And then they started to live under oppressive rule from King George and from the Monarchy, and they rebelled into the formation of the greatest, most prosperous, generous, benevolent civilization ever created in the history of the world.

France, to your point was a rebellion not inspired by the American Revolution. That is a lazy interpretation of history. It was inspired by greed and that's what drives the collectivist and the socialists. They were upset that the French ruling class was living so well.

So instead of having an American based revolution in France, where they wanted to restore natural rights and restore private property, they decided to begin what ended up being a decades' long slaughter of infighting, collectivist control. They tried what was called the Paris Commune for a very short period of time, it ended up being a total and complete disaster.

I think it's rather instructive, because the left will always operate in predictable patterns.

We can learn also from the Russian Revolution, which was different than the French Revolution. But this revolution right now -- this revolution that they're trying to do in America is a little bit of a mixture of both.

The reason it's different, though, is that never before have we seen a Marxist revolution be so outwardly against the country they're trying to take over. The Russian Revolution, they actually disguised themselves as pro-Russia.

They're actually trying to take over the country while convincing the populist it is a horrible and evil country.

LEVIN: And yet, Bernie Sanders says, don't call me communist. Don't call me a Marxist, although he embraces them. I'm a Democratic socialist, because he understands propaganda. He understands nomenclature. The left always does.

There's nothing democratic about Bernie Sanders, one election away from centralized, overbearing government. He wants to double and triple the size of the Federal government.

I want the American people to realize what that looks like.

KIRK: But we're not a democracy either.

LEVIN: And we're not a democracy, we're a Republic. So there are things in -- I'll give you an example, the Bill of Rights. Your neighbors don't get to vote on whether you have free speech rights, or whether you have freedom of association, or freedom of religion, or property rights. We don't put that up to a plebiscite. It's not up for a plebiscite. Those are God given rights.

KIRK: Yes.

LEVIN: The framers of the Constitution said.

KIRK: Natural from our Creator. And as the leftwing gets more power and grows, it's directly correlated with the hyper secularization of our culture.

And when people stop believing in God, then of course they wouldn't believe in God given rights.

LEVIN: And what do they believe?

KIRK: Well, they want government to be their God, and that is a great question, Mark. I am so glad you asked that because I go to some of these elitist schools, and they're screaming at me and they're protesting me.

And I do ask them the question, what do you believe in? I mean, what a horrible existence it must be to believe in nothing. I mean, you don't believe in God; therefore you don't believe in love. You don't believe in connection, you don't actually believe in a higher power or a creator.

And so they end up vesting their belief in these arbitrary buzzwords of the left. Well, I believe in equality. Okay, equality of rights or equality of outcomes? I just believe in equality. I think that all people should be equal at the outcome.

LEVIN: Let me say this as we go into the break. Equality in the wrong hands is a disaster. For all in the rice fields, equal, picking the same amount of rice.

KIRK: That's a great point.

LEVIN: And there's a limit. We're equal. But we're also living the life of death. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Welcome back. Charlie Kirk, you've written this book, "The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas that Will Win the Future." Give us some of the main ideas; obviously, it relates to President Trump.

KIRK: That's correct.

LEVIN: Go ahead.

KIRK: So I wrote this book, large in part because I felt that a lot of people were trying to describe the Trump doctrine incorrectly and the way I look at it is the MAGA doctrine is a doctrine of American renewal and American excellence that our country is almost in managed decline post Reagan.

And after the Reagan revolution and Mark, you informed me on so much of this through your writings and through your radio show. The Reagan revolution was incredible. It was an economic Renaissance. We took communism head on.

But unfortunately after HW Bush -- right after Reagan, we got HW Bush, we lost our way a little bit. We raised taxes. The Federal bureaucracy almost grew further with some of the people that Reagan pushed out.

And so I'm fearful that what if we don't learn the lesson of the Reagan revolution? We don't put into writing the doctrine of the Trump era, because I don't want post Trump, the Republican Party or the conservative movement to go back to status quo, ruling class technocratic government, essentially philosophy.

I think there's something so special about this President and what he's done for our country.

He has restored impartial -- the impartial judiciary through Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. The economic success is unprecedented. The lowest ever black unemployment, Latino unemployment, Asian-American unemployment. We are finally energy independent, 10 million people off food stamps.

LEVIN: Can I stop you right there? I don't think people realize this energy independence what a big deal this is.

KIRK: Yes.

LEVIN: This is something we have attempted to reach this point for half a century. And this President has brought us to this point, and his opponents just blindly say, I believe in a Green New Deal and we shouldn't have fossil fuels.

What are we going to do walk around with battery operated socks, propeller hats, and -- it's so absurd and yet look at what he's done? You're right.

KIRK: And it's because he, as a businessman -- and I write about this in the book -- has looked at every single issue analytically and asked himself the question, has the status quo in Washington, D.C. been benefiting the American people? And the answer to that question is large in part times, no.

And President Trump has, I think, changed the entire conversation on China for the better in Washington, D.C., which I consider to be American greatest geopolitical foe.

President Trump has upended the conversation in the Middle East, where he is ending, endless and perpetual wars, while also going after the terrorists that wish us the most harm, Qasem Soleimani and Al Baghdadi.

He is unafraid to stand with our allies such as Israel, to move the embassy in Jerusalem and recognize the Golan Heights.

And you ask yourself the question, why didn't past Republican Presidents do this in the last 20 years? Why would it take a billionaire businessman from New York to upend the political system?

And the argument I make in the book is because from that second, he announced, his motives were correct. His motives were not to get invited to D.C. cocktail parties. It was, he looked at the country as something that he loves so much, and he was tired of seeing it being taken advantage of.

So here's the question, will it be a Trump moment or a Trump movement similar to the Reagan revolution that gave us some of the greatest thinkers and writers and people such as yourself. I want to see President Donald Trump start a new renaissance of conservatism for the next 100 years and looking at it as 26 years old, I see him as an amazing inspiration and that's exactly why I wrote this book.

LEVIN: And your book is fascinating because you provide some of the substance, some of the answers to a lot of questions. For instance, Donald Trump didn't come to office and doesn't come to his job as an ideologue. He is instinctively conservative.

KIRK: That's right.

LEVIN: He loves this country. He wants to do what's right for the people of his country. He's under brutal, constant, relentless attack by the forces we've been talking about and he does something other Republican Presidents haven't done, he fights back.

KIRK: Yes.

LEVIN: Toe to toe, nose to nose and he won't give an inch.

KIRK: And part of the MAGA doctrine is not just passing good legislation, not just governing with conservative principles, but engaging in culture, the seven mountains of cultural influence, one of which is academia and he signed the free speech order for free speech, an Executive Order for free speech on college campuses, which we've benefited tremendously with at Turning Point USA.

He engages the culture in the terms of getting the left to finally be on defense, the first time in my life where I've seen the left actually be on defense, where he calls the media out for their outright activism for the Democratic Party.

And this President, he is open minded. This is a President in the past, you know, decades was not pro-life, and yet, he is the most pro-life president in American history. And he's unafraid to say I moved on this issue because I saw a real life instance of somebody that possibly could have been aborted and he is living a great life. He spoke at the March for Life.

He's cut Planned Parenthood funding and he deserves great appreciation for this. He has stood for religious liberty better than any other President that I can think of since Reagan.

And Israel, as I mentioned, embassy in Jerusalem, Golan Heights cutting funding to the Palestinian Authority, canceling the Iran Deal.

LEVIN: Which every Democrat running for President opposes, every single --

KIRK: They want to move the embassy back to Tel Aviv.

LEVIN: They want to move the embassy back, and particularly Sanders. He's got surrogates who he embraces who are vile anti-Semites. Whether it is Sarsur ...

KIRK: Whether it is Sarsur.

LEVIN: Tlaib.

KIRK: Omar.

LEVIN: Omar. And the Democratic Party has a problem.

KIRK: That's right

LEVIN: And the President has the guts to call them out. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Welcome back. Charlie Kirk, what is the core principle that the President operates from that you noticed?

KIRK: Well, his love for America. And I wish that wasn't something that divided the two political parties now. But I have real questions about the Democratic Party when they rip up State of the Union speeches, when they refuse to stand when such amazing successes are announced.

But what I love most about the President is his relentless commitment to delivering results to the people that voted for him and the people that didn't vote for him, the entire American populace.

And this is really important because typically, you see politicians overly pander to the constituents that got them into office.

The President has been unafraid to say, I was elected on putting China in check and better trade deals, but he's also going out of his way to deliver results for the black community, a community that predominantly didn't vote for him.

Opportunity zones lowest ever black unemployment rate, lowest ever black poverty rate, criminal justice reform, record funding for HBCUs.

He goes out of his way --

LEVIN: Black Colleges.

KIRK: HBCUs, exactly, Historical Black Colleges and Universities. He's gone out of his way to make sure that he is a president for all Americans, for bringing dignity back to forgotten America.

And the main driving point behind this book that I think people can learn from is where to next? Not just next beyond Trump, but this next eight months. We have to know these principles better than ever before, because I truly believe we've been given a gift in this presidency.

And I don't know if it's a gift that maybe we deserved it, maybe we didn't. But I'll tell you, what this President has delivered for our country is historic and it's something that has far exceeded the wildest expectations of many, many people in the entire kind of conservative intelligentsia.

And so as we move forward and young people are looking for inspiration, I want us to further embrace this MAGA doctrine, not to go back to the ruling class Republican status quo of open borders and China appeasement and sending billions of dollars to Iran and being perfectly okay with that.

But instead, a doctrine of sovereignty of American excellence, and American renewal.

LEVIN: I personally think this President really is one of the last opportunities to prevent the left from "fundamentally transforming America" and that he stands between us and them.

You look at what he's doing with the courts. He wants real constitutionalist on the courts, as you mentioned. They impeached him and tried to remove him, not because he did anything wrong. It's because they don't like the fact that he won and he's there.

KIRK: That's right.

LEVIN: And they want to reverse the course of history. History is going to judge them in my view very, very badly for what they attempted to do to this President and the Democrats and the left should know he represents tens of millions of us.

KIRK: That's right.

LEVIN: And we're not going anywhere. No, in fact, we're growing. And that's the message I also want to share with your audience, which is, I also run Students for Trump.

And right now, Students for Trump has more active chapters than Students for Bernie Sanders. We are growing at such an amazing pace. Because finally, we have a leader of the conservative movement in the presidency that's unafraid to fight for principle, that gives young people the courage and conviction to stand up against the left.

When they see President Trump go up against the media in a press conference, they say maybe I can go against my professor. When they see President Trump stand and sign that Executive Order that the media told him not to sign, they say, you know what, maybe I could start that Turning Point USA group or that Student for Trump group.

And he gives us the conviction and the courage that we've been looking for from a politician, and long gone are the days of the Republicans that go along to get along with Mitt Romney and other names that we will not repeat.

It's a new era for conservatism. One that is bold and one that will stand for American exceptionalism.

LEVIN: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Welcome back. Charlie Kirk, great book, "The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas that Will Win the Future." There's a lot in here that we're not going to be able to get to.

But as we close the program, I want to come back to where we started. Trump supporters are people who just oppose the Bernie Sanders, Buttigieg mentality of massive centralized government with tentacles everywhere. They really shouldn't take for granted a Trump victory. Why?

KIRK: Look, it's because we've been losing the culture in the last 30 years. Trump should win in a 1984 landslide, it's probably not going to happen.

You have so many forces working against this President and every Trump supporter out there should take it from me and what I'm seeing on these college campuses, this is going to be a brass knuckle fight for the future of our country come to November. Take nothing for granted.

Do not scoff and say oh, there's no way Bernie Sanders can win. No, he can win.

LEVIN: Or any of them.

KIRK: Anyone -- any one of them can win. And the moment we stop fighting, the left smiles because they know that's the point that they're going to attack harsher than ever before.

Our Republic is at stake coming this November. I'm going to do everything I possibly can on college campuses and we're going to go through a lot of adversity. And I hope every one of your viewers takes it upon themselves to donate, to get active, to run for office, whatever their own call to action is. We have to unite to defeat Marxism coming to this November.

LEVIN: Yes, everything is on the line. And you know what? It's too bad. We've now reached a point where every election is do or die and the framers never intended that.

KIRK: No.

LEVIN: Because we're outside the box of the Constitution. So much of what we do is post constitutional.

KIRK: And Mark, that's exactly why I wrote this book because this election is an election of action. Look, the left is going to be out in the streets. They're going to be going after our students on college campuses, the tech companies are going to try to do everything they possibly can to suppress conservative thought.

And so yes, it is a do or die election. Do I wish it was not the case? Of course not.

But to your brilliant point, we are in a post constitutional period. And yes, this is the most important election of our lifetime, because every election is now the most important election of our lifetime, because the stakes just keep getting bigger and bigger.

So I'm going to be visiting dozens and dozens of college campuses personally, from now to November, our network of thousands of campuses will be activated.

And I'll tell you, Mark, this is a fight that I believe we're going to win, but it's not going to come easily. The left will not give us our country back if we ask nicely. We have to take it back from them.

LEVIN: You're doing a great job. Thank you for being out there in the college campuses. We've got to figure out as a society, how to break up the monopoly of ideology that exists on these college campuses, rather than funding them with our tax dollars and parents with their tuition. Thank you.

KIRK: Thank you, Mark.

LEVIN: Appreciate it. See you next time on "Life, Liberty & Levin."

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