Americans should be concerned about Donald Trump’s potential arrest and indictment regardless of their personal opinions of the former president, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in an interview Tuesday on “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
“If I encounter someone who isn’t as grateful for [Trump] as you and I and your audience are, I say it doesn’t matter because if this can happen to him, it can happen to all of us,” Roberts told Kirk on his radio show and podcast. (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s multimedia news organization.)
Trump said over the weekend that he expected to be arrested Tuesday by New York authorities. Trump’s comments come as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, leads a grand jury investigation into alleged hush money payments made on Trump’s behalf to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
Roberts said conservatives must overhaul the left-wing system of justice by evaluating the FBI and “rogue prosecutors” such as Bragg, who is expected to become the first prosecutor to bring criminal charges against a former American president.
“The time is for action,” Roberts said.
The Right needs to understand that the Left hates it and what it believes, he added.
“What we’re calling for is for sober-minded, conservative Americans, centrists who don’t care who their political candidate is, to go take action in fixing this problem rather than just sitting around stroking our beards and writing op-eds about it,” Roberts said.
Kirk is the co-founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, which trains young conservatives to be leaders.
Roberts and Kirk agreed that America is at a crossroads. Although some pundits say America is on the road to a new civil war, Roberts said he wants unity.
“I think that you get closer to discord when you perp-walk a president for the first time in American history over a paperwork issue,” Kirk said. “Meanwhile, violent crime is going through the roof and the entire Democrat mafia is wealthier and more protected than ever.”
Allowing the Left to rob the Right’s “passion or enthusiasm for America” is the worst response to left-wing antics, Kirk said.
Calling himself a “recovering academic,” Roberts said he has fought radical leftists in academia for 25 years. Heritage’s president taught history at the collegiate level for several years when he was in the minority as a conservative Christian.
Regardless, people of faith who love America shouldn’t give up, he said.
“I understand fully everyone’s frustration and yet, this country still has a path, albeit narrow ahead,” Roberts said, adding:
And President Trump would be the first to say that this is worth fighting for. Other people who want to lead this country are saying the same thing—that isn’t empty talk. We can both fight the system, this two-tiered system of justice, while also recognizing that by doing so, we’re hopefully broadening or widening that narrow path ahead.
Roberts, who travels the country meeting with Americans every week, said there is hope for the nation’s future.
“There is a chance for us to save this great republic,” he said. “There is no chance if we all decide to stop fighting for it.”
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