Talk show host and leading conservative author Mark Levin pulled no punches when it came to the 2020 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders at an appearance at CPAC on Saturday.

“We need to crush Bernie Sanders. We need to crush his little Marxist Army. We need to defeat them on the battlefield of politics,” Levin told his wife, Julie Strauss Levin, who interviewed him during a 20-minute session on the main stage of the annual gathering of conservative activists.

“Bernie Sanders is an old Red. He’s a throwback, he’s an old Brooklyn Communist. . . He’s accomplished absolutely nothing, thank God. And what does he want to do? Nationalize. Nationalize. Free this. Free that. This guy’s never run a 7-11,” Levin said.

“It’s unbelievable to think that this man, who is a Marxist, would be the nominee for the Democrat party,” Strauss Levin noted.

Strauss Levin asked her husband:

A lot of people are very excited about that, because they think our president can crush him, and . . . he could crush him. But, isn’t there a bigger concern here, that in the United States of America, this shining nation, this city on a hill, we would actually have a Marxist who could be the president?

Levin replied:

First of all, you’re not allowed to call him a Marxist. You notice how they control the language? ‘He’s a Democratic Socialist. Oh! So then he must be OK.’ No, he’s not OK. He’s a Marxist. He’s been a Marxist. He will always be a Marxist. That’s number one. Number two. The Democrat party, like it or not, is the biggest political party in America. Can you imagine the Democrat party nominating a Marxist for President of the United States? Now this has been a slow burn. They’ve been building up to this moment. But if you’re a conservative, a Constitutionalist, this has to concern you. When people say, oh the Democratic establishment is trying to defeat him, I say, well defeat him. It’s OK. Wouldn’t you have moderates in the Democrat party than insane Soviet Marxists running for president of the United States, for God’s sake? We need to defeat these people every step of the way . . . When you look at the lineup of the Democrat party, there’s not a moderate among them. You want to abolish the electoral college? They believe in open borders. Can I say something about our healthcare system? It’s the greatest healthcare system on the face of the earth. And to the extent that it’s too expensive, you can thank Mother Government, that drives up the costs, that eliminates competition. You want to fix the healthcare system? We ought to have a thousand insurance companies. We ought to have a thousand healthcare plans. We ought to have a thousand times more doctors and nurses. It’s called competition. It’s called capitalism.

Earlier in the interview, Strauss Levin noted that the Israeli elections to determine whether Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu remains in office are in two days.

“Tell us what the implications for a Bibi win or loss would be for our country,” she asked Levin.

“First of all, can we thank the president of the United States for supporting the state of Israel? In so many ways, Donald Trump is an exceptional… not just president, but human being,” he began:

They tell him he can’t do something and he does it. The answer is, it’s a funny thing about democracies and republics and parliaments. After World War II, what did the British do? They voted Churchill out of office. Insane! What else did the British do? Well, Thatcher’s party stabbed her in the back, and they threw her out of office for John Majors, who was a joke. And now you look at Israel. You have the strongest prime minister in the history of that country who works very closely with our president. Who stares down the Iranians, the Syrians, the Palestinians, who’s brought enormous prosperity to that country, and what do they want to do? Put him in prison. Put him in prison if they possibly can. And what’s the lesson here? The left is diabolical, whether it’s in America, whether it’s in Israel, whether it’s in Britain. The left is the same. The left is diabolical. You have Bernie Sanders and other reprobates going around this country, telling you they believe in democracy. How do you believe in democracy when you want to centralize all power in the government? They believe in one election, their election! We had an election. We elected one of the greatest presidents in American history. And what do they seek to do? What do they seek to do? Remove him. Cripple him. Well, the same thing goes on in Israel. And, by the way, if you think our media is bad — and our media sucks — . . . if you think our media is bad, you ought to see it over there. It’s absolutely disastrous. . . I think Benjamin Netanyahu . . . is one of the greatest men I’ve ever met, too. And my fingers are crossed, and I pray that the Israeli people vote and keep him in power, otherwise they’re going to suffer.

“OK, let’s move to the U.S. election,” Strauss Levin said:

Before we talk about U.S. elections, you and I talk a lot about what’s happening to our society. And the fact is that the left, for almost a century, has done every single thing it can to break down the civil society. In universities, K-12, they’re teaching our young people to hate America. We’re racist, we’re xenophobic, they don’t like family. To me, though, one of the biggest dangers is their attack and their assault on faith . . . If faith is done away with, then everybody is supposed to turn to the government for what they have.

“When is the last time at these Democrat debates they’ve ever talked about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States?” Levin asked rhetorically.

When’s the last time you’ve heard the word “liberty”? Individualism? Private property rights? You understand, you do, that this is the basis for our nation. Anybody can create a totalitarian, centralized, bureaucratic, overbearing, devouring regime. Every little nut job dictator in the third world does that. And that’s where Bernie Sanders is. . . What is this Democratic Socialism? How do you have Democratic Socialism, when socialists hate democracy? You get one vote. They get in power. Then they destroy everything. You get one vote. They get in power. Then they destroy everything. Now how many more examples of “Democratic Socialism” do we need? How many more backwards, repressive, depraved societies do we need to create? How many more human guinea pigs do there need to be? From China, to the old Soviet Union to Zimbabwe to Venezuela to Cuba . . . to California. How many more do we need?

You can watch the full CPAC interview of Mark Levin by Julie Strauss Levin here.