Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder and executive director Charlie Kirk told Breitbart News that the idea the United States will end up in another regime-change war if it responds aggressively to terrorists — such as Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani — is “a false binary choice that the left and the media has always presented.” Kirk joined host Alex Marlow in a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.

“We’ve gone from a conservative movement that really liked this sort of ‘Team America, bomb everyone’ mode, to now it is the sort of sporadic surprise attacks on high-impact targets — typically if you’re risking zero ground troops is ideal — so not a total isolationist foreign policy, but no appetite for ground war, or regime change, or Democracy-exporting,” noted Marlow. “Why do you think that’s way to go as opposed to the other two extremes, which is, ‘We’ll fight a million wars all over the world, or we’ll just do nothing?'”

“Yeah, and again, that’s a false binary choice that the left and the media has always presented,” replied Kirk, outlining how leftists insist that if America responds to terrorism with any aggression at all, it will mean embarking on another regime-change war.

“And unfortunately, the traditional Republican establishment — especially in the mid-2000’s — they did exactly what you’re talking about,” continued Kirk. “And it’s actually proven not to work.”

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“Unfortunately, and especially in the Middle East, they’re not going to adopt First principles and individual liberty any time soon,” added Kirk of those who believe that the United States can spread its values “to every corner of the globe.”

“No,” said Kirk. “There’s a lot of other boxes that need to be checked, and guess what, when we have kids that can’t read in Baltimore, and we’re 22 trillion dollars in debt, and we have borders that are wide open — issues that Breitbart has been covering very steadily throughout the last couple years — why is it our problem again that the Middle East won’t adopt liberty and freedom?”

Kirk continued:

And that’s why I think President Trump’s perspective on foreign policy, which is very agile, very quickly responsive, is also understanding that his first and foremost duty is to improve the nation state of which he was sworn to protect, not to try to re-federate some broken country in the Middle East. And that’s a huge philosophical change, because the people more in the neo-conservative camp would say that it’s the duty to try to continue to push forward, and to continue this steady stream of troops and money into the Middle East. First of all, there’s no appetite for that in our country, the country is so tired of the endless conflicts overseas, especially with the issues that we have in [the Untied States].

The discussion then segued into the recent reports of CNN having settled a lawsuit with Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann.

“What was most stunning about the whole thing is was the archetype of what the media wanted this to be,” said Kirk.

“That’s why that story was trying to be spread as quickly as possible,” he added. “[The establishment press] said, ‘Look at these 14 and 15-year-old teenagers from Kentucky. They’re wearing Make America Great Again hats. They’re going up against Native American people. That’s how horrible Trump is.'”

“By the way, you and I both know, Alex, if Nick Sandmann was not wearing a MAGA hat, this is not a story at all,” noted the TPUSA founder.

“So then, he gets totally smeared by the media,” he added. “He gets completely misrepresented, and he does the right thing and he files a lawsuit against CNN, and Washington Post, and many others.”

Kirk continued:

I’m being told by lots of different people that this could be a total game changer in the way the media handles a lot of types of these issues moving forward — that it’s almost going to become, like a Richard Jewell 2.0. I don’t think the settlement was insignificant. He was suing for $275 million dollars. He probably didn’t get that, probably didn’t even get half that, but let’s say he got 5 percent of that, that’s $15 million dollars. That’s an extraordinary amount of money.

“It is the most anyone’s ever paid for one smile, ever,” quipped Marlow. “The fact that CNN settled probably means the Washington Post and NBCUniversal are going to be opening their wallets as well.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.