Colbert then asked Ocasio-Cortez — who had volunteered for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, and was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America — to explain her political ideology.

COLBERT: What is your agenda? Because you describe yourself as a democratic socialist, and that’s not an easy term for a lot of Americans. What is the meaning of that for you? What does ‘socialist’ mean to you?

OCASIO-CORTEZ: For me, democratic socialism is about — really, the value for me is that I believe that in a modern, moral and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live.

COLBERT: That seems simple.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Seems pretty simple. So what that means to me is health care as a human right. [cheers] It means that every child, no matter where you are born, should have access to a college or trade-school education, if they so choose it. And I think that no person should be homeless, if we can have public structures and public policy to allow for people to have homes and food and lead a dignified life in the United States.

COLBERT: Well, those all seem like very worthy goals. You may get a little resistance from Donald Trump.