Will Raphael Warnock Hear the Call?

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Ponte of America, I'm John Favre. This Sunday, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock. Senator Warnock stopped by the studio earlier this week. We talked about the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act, his trip to an ICE detention center in Georgia, the Democratic Party, all the topics you'd expect in a conversation with the Democratic Senator. But we also had a surprisingly candid and really enjoyable conversation about faith, religious faith, faith in our political system, and faith in America. We also talked about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, as many of you know, Reverend Warnock serves at the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is the same congregation that Dr. King once led. The Senator spoke openly about JD Vance lecturing Pope Leo on theology, increasing political violence in America, the discipline required to build and sustain a political movement as successful as the civil rights movement. And we even talked about what it would take for a Reverend like him to discern a call to run for president. And I will say, he did not close the door to a run. We'll get to that conversation in a moment, but before we do, the CricutCon pre-sale begins next week, starting Tuesday, May 12th. Friends of the pod subscribers can purchase tickets to CricutCon and receive a special subscriber only discount. General tickets go on sale the following week, Tuesday, May 19th. But if you want to guarantee your tickets for this year's bigger, better CricutCon, head on over to Cricut.com/Friends and become a friend of the pod subscriber. All right, here's Senator Rafael Warnock. (upbeat music) Senator Warnock, welcome back to the show. - Great to be back with you. - So you've written a book coming out next month. That's a sermon on Isaiah for America's 250th birthday. So before I ask anything about the news, I wanted to ask you about Isaiah and like why this prophet, why this text, and why not? - Well, thank you so much. I think I should tell your viewers that honestly, I didn't tell you to ask me about my new book. I saw that it was coming out and I was like, I know it's not so much for you, but this is fast. I've been very into thinking a lot, especially around the America's 250th. - Yeah. - And everything with what the Pope is doing too, and it's just I've gotten into that mindset. So when I saw that you were writing that book, I was like, I gotta ask about that. - Well, you know, I return every Sunday morning to my Pope it. I still lead Ebenezer Baptist Church, without the King preached. And I have been preaching a sermon, literally for the last few years in my own Pope it and popets all across the country. Churches, some temples, and some other places, rural communities, anyway, but it's based on this line from Isaiah that Dr. King used to quote sometimes in his sermons, "Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill made low, the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough place is smooth, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." It's kind of a vision of the land. It's a grand vision, what I call a moral topography, a new way of thinking about who we are for one another, a re-imagining of ourselves. And so I got this book coming out. Thanks, John. (laughing) On June 16th, called The Crooked Places Made Straight, Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America, as we go into the 250th anniversary, I use these sort of images, wonderful environmental images, if you will, as a way of talking about equity. The valley shall be exalted, mountains made low, putting us on a level playing field. Crooked places made straight, talk about integrity. Rough place is smooth, possibility, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and everybody will get to see it together inclusivity. So, equity, integrity, possibility, inclusivity, and I use that as a kind of values proposition or moral lens through which to engage, some of the big issues that have been at the center of our politics, including poverty, climate change, mass incarceration, a whole range of issues, and I invite Americans to join me in that conversation. When you look around today in 2026, what are the Crooked Places that you see? - Oh, God, the Crooked Places all over the place. And we see it at the center of our politics, there's a kind of moral rot that's eating away at the fabric of a country. It's all the way from the White House on down, and you're seeing this infection, and it's impact in negative ways, the grift, the ways in which there's always been corruption, but my goodness, the unabashed, unapologetic corruption that we're seeing coming out from this White House, and the ways in which it is set the tone for others, just not to tell the truth. And I don't know where to start, but we're seeing that we're seeing a president who is literally dismantling the country and literally selling it for parts, and enriching his own family in the process. And I just think that we're in a moral moment where people are looking for leaders who are thinking about something other than themselves. You know, I'm a Christian preacher, Jesus said, that if you seek to save your life, you'll lose it. But if you lose your life, meaning if you give your life over to something bigger than you'll find something greater and lofty, I believe that, and it's what informs my work as a public servant. - You talked about moral rot. You've also written that we suffer from a poverty of moral imagination. Who's imagination is impoverished? - Well, I think that you see it at the center of our politics. You know, folks are always telling us the things we can't afford. And then we look at, you know, we can't afford health care. You know, a few months ago, we were debating health care premiums in this country. And we were trying to get them to expand the premium tax credits for the Affordable Care Act. And they kept telling them, "Oh, we can't afford to do that." And so as a result of that, literally the health care costs for millions of Americans. So I'm 22 million Americans doubled on average for some tripled, quadrupled. We can't afford health care. We can't afford childcare. In fact, we heard Donald Trump literally say into the mic, "We need to think anybody would be listening." We can't afford that. Say we can't afford childcare. In fact, he said, "Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security." He talked about all these things as if, you know, these are special interest groups and not the people who, by the way, it's their money. I mean, I love it when politicians talk about people's money like it's theirs. You know, we can't afford all of that. You know, we're just going to, all we can afford, he said, was the military. And so we heard him say that. And we're watching him literally live out that basic, sick, and flawed premise. So we're now in another war in the Middle East at the cost of $1 to $2 billion a day, depends on whoever you ask. And so far with the money we've spent bombing Iran, we could have paid for pre-K, for four-year-olds, all across the country. And not only educated these children, I'm a big fan of zero to four investments because that's where the real power is. You know, you'll never be as smart. I hate to tell you, John, you're a pretty smart guy. You'll never be as smart as you were when you were four. - That is true. - I mean, that's where-- - I have a five-year-old. - So. - That's where it is. And then allowing their parents to get to work so that we increase the productivity and the prosperity of our country. So we suffer not from a poverty of resources, but of moral imagination. What Dr. King called a revolution of values is what we need. And that's what I work for him in the Senate. It's what I preach about on Sunday morning. And it's what I talk about in this book, The Quickest Places Made Straight. It is the poverty of moral imagination. Obviously, it's clearly a problem with Trump, with the White House, with a lot of elements. They're probably in party right now. Is it a problem for the left, for the Democratic Party at all? - Sure, absolutely. And, you know, I think we've been told for a long time that we, about the things we can't do. And, you know, as someone who, you know, came of age during the Reagan revolution and then, you know, the days after that. I'll tell you the first time it occurred, it really became real to me, that the issue was really not resources. Was when we went into, you know, those first endless wars in the Middle East, you know, the war, you know, the unnecessary war against Iraq. And, you know, for the first time, I realized, oh, it really ain't about the money. Because if it were, we wouldn't be bogged down doing this. And it's just amazing that some 20 years later, here we are, again. And so, yeah, your question is it on the left. I think all of us have been told, been sold a bill of goods. And I think that, yeah, I'm concerned about the deficit, the national debt, like everybody else. But literally, we've gone into endless wars, cut taxes for people who don't need it. I mean, people who are literally at the top. And meanwhile, Donald Trump has literally raised taxes for everybody else. And it's just interesting to me how Republicans don't even talk about the national debt when they're in charge, when they're in control. They control the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court. Have you noticed they're not talking about the national debt? No, we get a Democratic president now. They'll start talking about it again. And then I just think, I think on a whole range of things, housing, for example, we just need to go bigger. I'm proud of the fact that we passed the road to housing bill out of my committee, the banking housing and urban affairs committee. By the way, little glimmer of hope in these dark times. Tim Scott is the chair of the committee. Elizabeth Warren is the ranking member. Can you imagine that? Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren went into a bar. They came in with a housing bill. Sounds like you're beginning of a bad joke. And yet, that bill passed our committee unanimously. Every Republican, every Democrat voted for it. Past the Senate overwhelmingly. We'll see what the folks do in the house. I'm proud of it. My provision caps what private equity has been doing here in California. And Georgia, all across the country, literally swooping in the communities, buying up so much housing stock and renting it. And sending the prices up for people who are trying to rent and people who are trying to buy. I've got other great provisions in the bill. As proud as I am of that bill. In a time when we're facing a affordability crisis, affordable housing, it will help. It will help a lot, but not enough. We're five million units short. And I just, on housing, it's a supply side problem. And I think there comes moments and there are particular problems in the world where sometimes government, which is certainly not the answer to everything, but sometimes government is singularly, uniquely situated to help with certain problems, to get things going going. And so one of the things I'd like to see is for us to go much bigger than what we see even in that incredible bill. I'm glad that I'm hoping it's going to get past. But I hope when we're in power, we will invest more. Maybe the government ought to get into buying or building houses and then selling it to the people. But we've got to get this thing going. The average age right now, the first time homeowner is 40. And so we, whether you're talking about affordable housing or healthcare or just wages that are stagnant. Waders are stagnant. Prices are going up. People are experiencing a material deficit that I think that has left them deeply, deeply frustrated and demoralized quite frankly. And that in turn has created the context for this kind of spiritual sickness as I see it in our country of kind of, of spiritual malady that lets someone like Donald Trump emerge. That's when people are desperate. When people's needs are not met. That they are open to the lives of a demagogue who says, "You know what your problem is? It's your neighbor." It's that other person over there. And the deep cynicism that sets in like gangrene in the body politic. We need moral medicine. We need leaders who will tell us who we are when we stand together. You preached at Ebenezer last Sunday on the Supreme Court's decision in Kalei. Which is the voting rights case from Dr. King's pulpit. You know, you called it a Jim Crow method. Talk a bit about that sermon. What did you say to your congregation on that day? And why did you say it? Well, you know, I come from a tradition where we can't remain silent when that kind of thing happened. I don't know what I was planning to preach before that decision came down, but after it came down, I had to address it. Let's be really clear that what we witness in that Supreme Court decision is a devastating and massive blow to all of the progress we made that was led by Martin Luther King, Jr. And the sad irony is that the people who are cheering that decision right now and who can't contain their glee come January. They will stand up in Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations all across this country and extoll the virtues of a Martin Luther King Jr. that they've created in their mind. You cannot remember Dr. King in January and spend the rest of the year dismembering his legacy. The voting rights act of 1965 is the crown jewel achievement of the civil rights movement without which I literally would not be sitting here with you right now as a United States senator from Georgia. And you would not have a congressional black caucus as large as it is. We wouldn't be living as much as we are into what I see as the creed of this nation, the E. Purpose Unum, out of many, one, they are trying to remake this country into their dystopian racist Jim Crow image. There are too many political hacks on the Supreme Court. And they're doing the bidding of this president who's trying to stay in power at all costs. He knows that Americans are not buying what he's selling. He told them that he was going to lower their costs that he's raised them. That he was going to keep us out of war. He took us into another war. And so we have to be full-throated in fighting for voting rights. Because while there are other issues, the democracy itself, the ability to have a voice, that's the framework in which we get to fight for all the other things that matter. And so I was deeply, deeply disappointed but not surprised by this decision. The Supreme Court has been working on dismantling voting rights for years. It's certainly one other tragic moment was Shelby versus Holder in 2013, when they hobbled Section 5 and now Section 2. I don't want to go on and on about this, but sorry for the long answer. But you know, when they really should go back and look at what happened after their first decision. In 2013, you had Shelby versus Holder and that was about Section 5. And John Roberts, who has appeared to be the umpire, who just sort of call him balls and strikes. I think he has tarnished his legacy greatly. And the Supreme Court. This has been his project for a while. We've learned that this is clearly his project. He said we don't need this anymore. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg, God bless her memory. She said in her dissent that doing what we're doing in Section 5 is like getting rid of your umbrella in a rain storm because you're not getting wet. And her words proved to be prophetic. Everybody's inclined, everybody has a right to their own opinion, not their own facts. Here are the facts. Since they dismantled Section 5 in 2013, the racial voter turnout. That gap is actually widened. And I just think it's important to emphasize that because I think it's easy, even for people on our side, to look and see me sitting in this chair and not know that the turnout, the voting turnout gap has widened in the years since 2013. And it is widened twice as fast in the states that used to be under pre-clearance. That are no longer under pre-clearance. In other words, they're not the only ones, but the same states. And I love George. But the same states, I represent George. The same states that were discriminating prior to the 1965, within hours. Found new ways. They started doing things that make the lines longer in black and brown communities, purging people from the voter rolls, which George's last two secretaries of state have been very good at, and all of these things. And now, so that had an impact on people showing up because it gets to access, right? And then the decision, last week, says an effect that even when you show up, after you overcome those barriers and you show up, we're going to mute your voice. We're going to minimize your voice so it won't have the same impact by playing with the lines. And since it's a one, two punch, and all Americans who love our country, even with its flaws, but who believe in that basic creed, one person, one vote. who believe in we, the people, the first three words of the Constitution, as I do, we all ought to be deeply concerned and we ought to be fighting for our democracy. And one of the best ways to do that, for folks who are asking, is to mobilize voters. By part of how we can at least mitigate this gerrymandering that we're going to see, is to overwhelm them by showing up. Pots of America is brought to you by Tommy John. What do I love about Tommy John? They're the best. They feel great. I'm wearing them right now. They're super comfortable. I basically only wear Tommy John. 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I'm just wondering for you personally, as a pastor, a black man, a human being, what does that tiredness feel like to keep fighting this fight and watch the civil rights laws get unwound piece by piece and you've been fighting for so long? What one title you left out is "Father." I'm a father of a nine-year-old and a daughter and a seven-year-old and anybody who knows me knows that those are the two brightest stars in my universe by far. So when I say I'm tired part of what I'm saying is I can't believe that my children are going to be wrestling with this, you know, that they, that they, that they have managed to be born at a time when we're witnessing some things that I didn't, you know, didn't have to experience it. You know, I lived, I lived most of my life under the protections of the voting rights law. They're stepping into a world without it. And so here we are in a time when things that we would associate with a much darker period are literally 20, it's a 21st century fight. The fight against Jim Crow is now 21st century fight but I refuse to be, I'm, I get tired and that's true. It's, it's both physical and it's, it's, it weighs on your spirit and your emotions but here's what we can't afford to do. We can't, we cannot afford to give into those who are trying to weaponize despair because that's part of what this administration is up to. We can talk about all the policies and as we learn tragically last week, we'll win some, we'll lose some, we'll win some elections, we'll lose some, we'll win some policy fights, we'll lose some, but here's the fight we cannot afford to lose, to fight for your spirit. We cannot allow those who want to weaponize the spirit of win. We can't allow them to convince us that they've already won and so that there's no need, need to fight. And here, here's why I'm, I'm a, I'm a blessed man. I was John Lewis's pastor and you know, I got to know him. I, I used to visit his wife when she was sick. I've spent time at his home. I presided over his funeral. And I think about him crossing that Edmund Pettus bridge and to even zoom out even more about how he ended up on that bridge. After they passed the civil rights law of 1964, Dr. King went to see President Johnson and Johnson rightly as you might imagine was happy to say, look, we passed civil rights bill and Dr. King said, great, I need a voting rights bill. Did not even skip would be great. Go ahead, patch them on the back. Guess what? I need a vote of rights bill. And LBJ began to say, I get it, but we can't do that right now. There's no way we can get that passed right now. I don't have the power. He said, you know, the political capital, I had to spend to get that done. Martin, I just don't have the power to do it right now. And they left the meeting. The staff was feeling all demoralized and ejected and the young, by the way, told me the story. He said, we're all feeling demoralized and somebody said to Dr. King, what are we going to do? The President of the United States just told us that he doesn't have the power to get us voting rights. And Dr. King just sort of shrugged his shoulder and he said, you know, if the president doesn't have the power, I guess we're going to have to go and get himself. I love it. And they did. And they did. So they went to Selma to get the president some power. Dr. King understood that it's not about the people and powers about the power and the people. And that's why how John Lewis and others ended up on that bridge and crossing that bridge with brute force under the color of law on the other side of that bridge, ready to bludgeon them before they allowed them to vote. And John Lewis and so many others kept marching. They kept walking. They had no reason. I think it's easy for us to forget that. Those of us who were post civil rights generation babies. And then just the easy story we Americans tell ourselves, right? There was no reason for them to believe that they could win. Those victories were not inevitable. They were quite improbable. I'm so glad that John Lewis and so many others kept walking. And so my advice to us in this moment, keep walking. Keep walking. We've been talking about the moral and political arguments surrounding racism and voting rights and democracy. One surprising trend in the Trump era is that according to election results, racial polarization has declined over the last decade, largely because a small but not insignificant share of black men, especially younger black men, have stopped voting for Democrats, summer staying home, some, I'm sure, you know, voting suppression, voter suppression has clearly played a role. But more also actually voting for Donald Trump. He doubled his support among black voters between 2020 and 2024. And clearly some of these young men are hearing something from Trump and the right that they are not hearing from us. And I wonder, as a pastor, what do you think they're hearing and what have we failed to say? Yeah. No, it's a great question. And, you know, we got to engage and we have to resist the false dichotomy between standing up for women and standing and being of a very clear voice against misogyny and sexism which I talked about at left a couple of Sundays. ago and that's in my pulpit. And at the same time, seeing the ways in which men and young men in particular and young black men and unique ways and Latino men are hurting. And somebody's got to speak to that. You know, it's a whole range of issues. I think so many of our young people feel demoralized. You know, I think about what I was able to do as a kid. I grew up in public housing. You know, I'm one of seven boys in my house. And the first college graduate, and I'm grateful that I had a path. You know, it'd be harder for me to do what I did now than it was for me as a kid growing up in the 80s. First college graduate in my family, one of 12 total kids, earned four degrees, coming out of projects, come to pastor of, you know, fairly famous church, becoming United States Senator, it'd be hard for me to do that now. And I think people feel that and young men feel that in a particular way. And they feel demoralized. And I think we have to find a way to be really clear and full-throated in our condemnation of sexism, misogyny, sexual abuse. I talked about all this stuff a couple of weeks ago. I said, do all the time. While at the same time, just talking about the agency that all of us have and create opportunities for men and for our boys. I think, you know, I've got a seven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl. I just want them to be okay. And I think sometimes we get caught up in our jargon on the left. And people sometimes don't know what the heck you're talking about. I think speaking plain English, because more often than not, our policies would actually be more helpful, right? But you've got to speak plain English to folks. You know, one of the things that I've been talking about for years has nothing to do with, you know, any political ambition, something that comes from a, from deep experience. I've been talking about mass incarceration. And there's not enough talk about that even on our side, not a, not nearly enough. And I raised it inside the Democratic Caucus from time to time. I'm worried, for example, about these detention centers that are being built. I'm worried about the implications for the immigrant community. And by the way, I went to social circle Georgia. That's another story I could tell you. But, you know, so it's a red town where they're building a 10,000. They bought a warehouse. They want to put a 10,000 dead detention center in a 5,000 citizen town. And those folks even, they voted for Trump. They voted for that, right? But I'm worried about what that means. Think about our governments getting ready to warehouse human beings. Literally put them in a warehouse, 10,000 people. By the way, across the street from elementary school. And they want to do this all over the country. It's, it's a moral atrocity. But, but here's what I also know from our recent history. When they, when you build that kind of infrastructure, you're going to use it. And so it's immigrant communities today. I'm worried that it will probably be black and brown, you know, folks tomorrow, you know, particularly young men. You know, we're the mass incarceration capital of the world over the last 40, 50 years and a year since Dr. King died. The land of the free has become the mass incarceration capital of the world. We're 4% of the world's population. We warehouse 25% of the world's prisoners. This has played itself out over decades and communities like, you know, in Baltimore and Philadelphia and Atlanta and South Central LA. And we're under Republican and Democratic administrations if we're honest. Men have been warehouseed. And now I think we're seeing some of the children of those men who've been warehouse. And the impact of that is a kind of a social long COVID that we're experiencing in our country. And I think somebody's got to find a way. We have to talk to that and give people spaces where they can talk. I do it in my church, but I think we've got to find a way to do it. You know, he had felt like we were for a while on a path where even folks on the right were willing to do something about, you know, rehabilitation, prison reform coming from. And now we are in this situation where we're back to showing that, you know, you've got to be sure that you're really tough on crime as if like we can't be tough on crime and also not be the capital mass incarceration capital of the world. Yeah, I mean, for all of those prisons. And again, we have no, we have more prisons than anybody in the world. I mean, think about that. United States of America warehouse is more of its people, literally more people in prison and a greater percentage of its people than any other nation on the planet, including those whose human rights records we love to deplore. So think North Korea, think Iran, think China. We got more people. And now we, that's the policy that we followed again through Republican and Democratic administrations for decades. Our country could have decided in the wake of the post-industrial change that we saw as we move from an industrial nation to the post-industrial era to a service economy. We could have invested in training our young people, getting them ready for that new economy that was emerging. And instead, we invested in the infrastructure of death and incarceration. And and we're seeing the results of that. And I, you know, what I would like to see us do in this moment is we look at these new emerging technologies, AI, which ain't going anywhere. And a whole range of things. How do we get our kids ready? How do we invest in children so that no matter what zip code you're from, there's a path to the American dream, your parents income doesn't determine your outcome. That's, that's what I mean when I say we suffer not from a poverty of resources, but, but of moral imagination. We've got to, we, we need to reimagine who, who we can be. You said something a couple of minutes ago that stuck with me about agency. And I think it's so important. And, and you also talked about some of the, the jargon and the Democratic Party's language. I wonder sometimes like, do you ever worry that the Democratic Party's argument that this system is structurally rigged against people, which is, has a lot of truth to it, right? Do you worry that sometimes that can tip into being disempowering because it somehow robs people in that story of agency to fix the system? Well, I, I don't know that they need us to tell them that they're living it. Every people, every day people know that the system is stacked against them. They know it in their bones and they, they don't always have the words, you know, that we want to use. They know it. Do they feel like they can change it? They feel it. Yeah, I think, I think that's that, you know, some, you know, that's the thing. Do people feel empowered to change it? And I do think that there are a lot of people who feel powerless, which is why they signed up for Donald Trump. You asked me that question earlier. Let me ask it, answer it more directly. I think that there are, there are people and I do think it's overstated. Donald Trump didn't have this hoax, huge slew of black men voting for them. I think part of that was a game they played during the election in 24. I think they were trying to create a permission structure, a bandwagon so people would, would jump on it. But, but they were not, they weren't overwhelming. It was one is too many, but they weren't overwhelming numbers of black men voting for Donald Trump. But I do think that, that people feel the ways in which the powerful and the well-connected have the cards. And in that situation, you do create the context for someone like Donald Trump with his dystopian vision of the country emerging. Here's what the Trump voters and, and, you know, let's, you know, Bernie Sanders voters had in common. They're looking for somebody to tear the thing up. Because they're just like, look, it's not working. And they came to different conclusions. But I think, I think, I think people do do feel some of that. And I've seen it up close, you know, now that I'm in the Senate. When we, when we passed the inflation reduction act, largest clean energy bill and investment in human history, also the thing we did in there was prescription drugs. We kept the cost of prescription drugs. My own bill kept the cost of insulin to no more than $35. A lot of pocket costs for seniors. But in that bill, for the first time, Medicare was empowered to force the pharmaceutical companies to have to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. So just think about that. We had to pass a law. [BLANK_AUDIO] So that Medicare and do the other bad law that we passed yeah What kind of capitalism is that for folks, you know, what kind of capitalism is that where the buyer gets the where the seller gets to tell you to price Something and you don't and you don't get to the discuss it like what kind of capitalist, but that shows you how rigged The system is and so we we addressed it we passed a bill so so Medicare could negotiate How many drugs ten ten whole drugs and then that wouldn't go into place for a few years after we did it It shows you that the voices of the people are Increasingly squeezed out of their democracy Big money well-connected folks Have an outsized voice in our politics, which is why even when there's agreement on things on the left and the right Like universal background checks for example in the gun Safety debate we can't get it done because the politics too often is owned by somebody other than the people And the people feel it And I think they're looking for folks who will champion their concerns. I'll tell you I can I can only speak for myself I I love this job. I love being a United States Senator I mean first of all, it's a deep honor literally for 11 million people That I represent in the state of Georgia You know that I get to represent them even the ones who didn't vote for me I get to fight for those most of us people in social circle Georgia when at detention centers They they're Trump voters, but I get to stand up to the administration that they elected to fight for them I love this job, you know, I'm a you know, it's it's who I am. I love to serve but While I'd like to get reelected so I can continue to serve. I Don't know this job enough to sell my soul You know like I I have an identity outside of being a senator I'm a pastor I'm the father to amazing little children who are nine and seven and they're constantly telling me what to do I You know a lot of things and I was an activist before I did I got I got elected I got I got arrested in the in the building where I where my office is before I had an office I got arrested there as an activist also building I believe named after a Georgia senator that was like an arch segregationist that now that you sit in his seat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess what I'm saying to you is I love this job, but I don't need it that bad Yeah, and I do think we need more We could use more leaders who who love doing the work, but they don't need it. Yeah, that it that we we do need that Pots of America is brought to you by Sundays is your dog's food created to maximize your dog's quality of life or to extend The food shelf life think about it. I'm all you do. 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Don't delay vote from abroad dot org You fit something a few weeks ago to my pal Jen Saki that stuck with me Which is that when JD Vance told the Pope to to be careful stay in his lane. I know it drove me insane You said that I didn't just roll my ass. That's not you know I was doing worse than that. Well, you made a comment You said that's how fascist talk and you also brought up right Christians who were the the German pastors who capitulated to Hitler By deciding the appropriate place of the church was in personal piety not in systemic injustice Loved to know what made you draw that connection when you say someone like Vance is talking like fascist when you mention Bonhoffer and the right Christians as a comparison like where does that argument come from in you what it what is the tradition that you're drawing on there? Well, you know, I've been thinking about faith in politics for a long time, you know, I'm a trained systematic fear load I You know, I've studied that period. I wrote a thesis on King and Dietrich Bonhoff or Bonhoffer Was was part of the very little Christian resistance? The Hitler got most of the church in Germany capitulated to Hitler. They became right Christians and so you know No two periods are the same and I'm not you know conflating it in that sense, but their lessons to be learned I have to say that that in my view JD Vance is One of the most craven Politicians on the American landscape Here is someone who literally said that Donald Trump is America's Hitler and then he Actually ran a campaign to become its running me You know he ran a campaign focused on one to be his running mate So if if Trump is is America's Hitler and then he campaigned to be his running mate. What does that make JD Vance? I think we saw a glimpse of That cravenness in recent weeks when JD Vance who was a recently converted Catholic Had the unmitigated audacity to lecture the Pope on how to be the Pope The the Pope is doing what what we need more religious leaders to do and and that is to bring a kind of moral Question to who we are and and he was literally advocating for peace Imagine that and I just which is what all the popes do. Yeah, so I just I I Well, you know, I just Couldn't help but be struck by JD Vance the newly converted Catholic who wrote a whole book about his conversion Which is interesting Then then then turning around and saying that you know when the Pope was talking about theology he ought to be careful Talking about theology he ought to be he ought to stay in his lane. What are you talking about? It's fascinating to me even from a theological perspective and you hit on it and I obviously this was this was your thesis but this sort of Divide between personal piety and systemic injustice and you could tell from what JD Vance was saying And I think this is the case with a lot of the more recently converted Catholics who are on the right evangelical Christians the focus is very much on personal morality sexual morality and it very little on the larger moral questions as you say in your book the moral topography of the world and I do find that to be a If I need to be clarifying and also perhaps something that you know, but the left can kind of rally around and I wonder if you think Sometimes you worry that Democrats have sort of seated the territory In terms of using more spiritual religious language regardless of what your faith actually is In a time where you have people like Vance and Trump, you know, attacking the Pope and then Democrats kind of have to just Except for you and a couple others have to just kind of sit back and watch because they don't they're not familiar with that link I worry about it deeply it is something that I that I'm I'm thinking about a lot Because we have the historical lesson Right and I don't want I keep going I don't want to keep going here, you know, because no two historical peers are alike But it was Vade JD Vance who said that Trump is America's Hitler. So he said The historical lessons are there The church in Germany Retreated into this very narrow ghettoized View privatized view of the faith where faith is just limited to issues of you know, maybe into personal relations and personal piety But we're going to let the state Carry on in our name and do all kinds of -- so we already know the lessons of that. We don't have to go to Germany. That's the lessons of the American Christian slaveocracy also, which was built on the premise that we're enslaving human beings, but we're saving their souls. So it's all right. Matter of fact, we're doing them a favor. And so there is dangerous for people of faith, for people of moral courage who claim no faith tradition at all, to see these larger questions about the society and about how it's arranged and who gets crushed and who doesn't. It's dangerous for us to leave that -- to potentate, to leave that to politicians. And it's dangerous for those of us who are concerned about these issues to let the right dominate the space about faith and values, particularly since in my view, they've got so much of it, so very wrong. Donald Trump recently depicted himself as Jesus Christ. I guess putting his names on the building wasn't enough. He's now King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And I have to call it out because it's blasphemy. And it's a deep, deep distortion. I'm a Matthew 25 Christian. Jesus came to feed the hungry. Donald Trump is taking food out of the mouths of hungry children through these draconian snap cuts. Jesus spent much of his life healing the sick. Donald Trump is taking their health care away. And so we have to condemn his actions and we have to condemn his speech. I thought it was interesting that there were faith leaders even some in his camp who came out and rightly criticize him depicting himself as Jesus Christ. Congratulations to them for that. But it's not enough just to condemn that the picture and say nothing about his policies. Because his policies are far more blasphemous than the picture. Or even in that same weekend some of them condemn the picture, but those same people did not condemn the we're going to eradicate a civilization and the threats of the war crimes and which is just as blasphemous. He literally said a whole civilization will die tonight. And, you know, we've all heard Donald Trump's bluster over the years. But you know, we can't dismiss that, you know, because it's dangerous talk. It undermines the credibility of our nation. And on the globe, it undermines America's voice. It's more credibility. It's doing a whole lot of damage. I mean, can we stand together no matter what you're on the left or the right and say we don't want an American president who talks like that and acts like that as well. One fellow Democrat who hasn't seated that that territory is James Telleriko, the 36-year-old Presbyterian seminarian from Texas who's running for Senate. He's named you publicly as a role model. Said he wants to follow your playbook to Flip a Red State. You sit back in March that you hope will have yet another pastor in the United States Senate. Why does it matter to have another pastor in that chamber? What is having more pastors in the Senate? What does that bring to the country? Well, it's something I think about all the time because I think it ought to make a difference. I don't think it automatically will. You know, like I asked myself all the time, what difference does it make? That you're standing here as a pastor and as a pastor of Ebenezer Church and that's an asset test that I bring to myself as I look at what I'm going to vote this way or that way where I'm going to fall on this policy or that. I can tell you that when I was running for the Senate in Georgia, there were those who cautioned me and said, "I don't know about you wearing your identity as a pastor so clearly and on apologetically. You're going to alienate certain voters and I don't know who else to be other than myself." I'll tell you that the folks who they put around me because I was running for office, I'd never run for office before. My comp's team used to put this thing on my memos when I get ready to do interviews and that kind of thing. It said, "Remain the reverent." Every time when I would see that, I would laugh. I'm like, "Well, what else am I going to do?" I'm glad you didn't tell me to be somebody else because I don't know who else to be. -Beasy instruction. -The other than myself. I talked about my faith, but I hope in a way that doesn't feel oppressive to people who don't share my particular faith tradition. What I'm always trying to do is open the tent, wide in the tent, the tent so that everybody is a part of it. What I discovered was that the people of Georgia found that refreshing both Democrats and independence. I think Republicans gave me a hearing because they heard a certain kind of voice. I do think we need people of moral courage in this moment and so some of those people will be clergy, some will not be clergy, some will be Christians, some will be Muslims, some will be Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs. Some will claim no particular faith tradition at all, but they will have a vision of our common humanity. It's an important question because let me be really clear. Here's what I'm really clear about. I don't want to live in anybody's theocracy. I bring my values and not my creeds to my work as a senator. I think those values are resident in all the great faith traditions and those who claim no faith tradition at all. I'm talking about love, I'm talking about compassion, empathy, truth telling, empathy. In the words of Isaiah who said a little child shall lead them looking into the eyes of other people's children and having enough moral capacity to see in the eyes of other people's children, even your adversaries, a glimpse of your own. That's the kind of politics I'm talking about. Pots of America is brought to by Mint Mobile. I don't know what you but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping your money too. If you're fed up with crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks that actually cost more in the long run, switch to Mint Mobile. Stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint exists purely to fix that. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. 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All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to vote from abroad.org and click Request My ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote from abroad.org. Dr. King was the apostle of non-violence in this country and it was as theological as much as it was a political strategy. He believed non-violence was the only force in the universe that could break the cycle of violence. We are living right now through a moment of rising political violence on the right and on the left. Paul Poloci, the Minnesota legislature, legislators, UnitedHealthcare CEO Charlie Kirk, the multiple Trump assassination attempts, including one of the correspondence center a few weeks ago. What do you think King, the apostle of non-violence in this country, would say to America right now? He used to say that an ethic of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. I think that's an important lesson in this moment, which is why in the days after a day or so after Charlie Kirk was killed, I decided to go to the floor of the United States Senate and condemn that killing. Now, I've condemned other forms of violence, certainly against Paul Poloci and others. but I thought it was particularly important for me to do that after Kirk's killing so that I could say as a moral voice that political violence is not acceptable. You cannot have a democracy and political violence. Political violence is the opposite of democracy. We have loud, robust, and sometimes rambunctious arguments in the American public square. And we have those arguments if we're thinking about it right, not as a precursor to violence, but we have those arguments instead of violence. And so I said that day when I went to the floor of the Senate that I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on almost everything. I mean, he had the nerve to ask whether Dr. King was a force of good in the world. I didn't agree with that man about anything. But guess what? He had a right to think what he thought in America. And he had a right to change his mind or not. And I genuinely mourned the idea that these small children were now robbed of their father and a wife of her husband. But we have to be consistent. What is deeply disappointing, again, unfortunately, not surprising, is that we have someone in the White House who is stirring the pot even after those assassination attempts. He could have used those moments to bring us together. I mean, terribly dramatic moments. He could have reminded us of who we are when we stand together. And instead, he just leaned into more arguments about all of this coming from the left. And this is not a difference between right and left. It's the difference between right and wrong. And we have to be consistent about that. And this work shouldn't be so hazardous that good people have to ask themselves when they think about their own families whether or not they should get in this work or not. That's all that at the end of the day is a huge loss for the American people. King's strategy of nonviolence sort of depended on a country that could be shamed, that an audience whose conscience could be reached and changed by the sight of suffering. I've heard this too. I have argued with folks on the left about this as well, which is like, yes, nonviolence is great. And that was great in the civil rights movement. But there was also violence back then. And there was obviously violence perpetrated on Black Americans back then. And when the repression and the oppression is so great, sometimes people don't have a choice. And it's justified. And I wonder if you think we still live in that country where the conscience of a country can be changed by the sight of suffering and the strategy of nonviolence is still not just the morally right strategy, but the politically effective strategy. I think that the genius of King was that he appealed to our conscience. And he also appealed to our charter documents. He reminded of America what it said about itself, even in that very last term, before he lost his own life tragically to political violence. He said, referring to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, be true to what you say on paper. And so I don't have an easy answer to that. Can the country be shamed? The story of America is that we have these moments when the democracy expands and we have these moments when it contracts. And we are clearly in a contraction moment right now. And with that Supreme Court ruling and others, they're squeezing the democracy. But women who've given birth know that contractions are necessary for birth. And my hope is that by continuing to speak the truth, moral swation, but also the other part of the civil rights movement is there ways in which you force people to the table. Birmingham went on moral swation. It was, let's see if these shopkeepers think it's a good idea to continue to marginalize people in the days that lead up to Easter shopping. Right. Right. So politics requires leverage. And it is an exercise in power. And we've got to use all of those tools. And I would encourage us to use them in this tough moment when they're when they're literally doing everything to try to crush the voices of ordinary people. We've got to stand up, you know, a little taller, straighten our backs, speak a little bit louder. And, you know, I think the moment comes when the democracy expands. And we don't know when it's going to happen. But we have to keep doing the work. One of those tools is is discipline. And and King certainly knew about that and the civil rights movement. One thing I always think about the civil rights movement that people sort of forget is just how incredibly well disciplined it was. Yeah. And strategic. And also, can I give you a little bit of hope? Yeah. Because I live in Atlanta. So I get to hang around Andy Young and John Lewis before he died and CTV and I mean, I walked around with giants. So here's the other thing I want us to think about in this moment is because they'll tell you if you asked them, there's a way in which they didn't know what the heck they were doing. So I want to encourage us because these answers are not easy, right? Yeah. And I've got some ideas. You've got ideas and things that we know we need to do. But they're, you know, if I mean, I think that's a mark all so good leadership and being honest that there's life is hard and these problems are complex. And so so there's a fog too, right? And they kept walking. They didn't know that stuff would work and they didn't always know what to do. And there were arguments among themselves, you know, you know, you got, you got Joseo Williams and Stokely Carmichael, you know, on one and Andy Young all in the room. And and and and feces and tithesis and senthesis and the kind of healthy arguments that are needed to get to the right answer. I guess what mattered is that they were, they were all in the room together and had those arguments and weren't fighting online with each other. Right. We need a little bit more grace for each other. Pastors like yourself are people who discern calls, not a metaphor, that's obviously part of the vocation. So I'm not going to ask you whether you're running for president. I'm going to ask you something different, which is how would a pastor discern a call to run for president, not whether you will, but but what does discernment actually look like for someone whose life is built around listening for that kind of question? I think that part of discerning what what any of us ought to be doing is getting in the free. You know, I won't quote a pastor, Roosevelt had this thing about the man in the arena. And so nothing, nothing I love about this work is I get to be in the arena. I could be somewhere home ringing my hands about what's going on. I get to be in the fight and all of us do. You don't have to run for office. We all get to be in the fight. So I think, you know, in the days ahead and the months ahead, part of what we have to do is get in, get in the fight and do the work. And I think through the process of doing, we get the clarity about what we ought to do next. What's sermon you're working on right now? Well Sunday's Mother's Day. Can I tell you a pastor has one job on Mother's Day. Make sure all the mama's feel good. That's whatever else you do. If you fail at that, you have failed. Make sure that the mother's and the grand mother's an easy target there. Mama and big mama need to know and God mothers and people who don't have biological children, but have been like mothers to all of us and mothers of sacred memory to lift them up. And I've said this, you know, you know, Mother's Day, and I really do mean it, you know, for folk who find, particularly who find religion to be a little bit mysterious. I think a mother's love, and that's not everybody's story, but whoever it was that mother to you. A mother's love is about the closest thing we have to the grace of God. If you want to glimpse of what God is like, see a mother in action, particularly when she's got a fight for her children. That is very true. That is very true. Um, Senator Warnock, Reverend Warnock, thank you so much for joining Pazaev America, and come back again soon. Good to be with you. Pazaev America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari, with Reed Charlene, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffco, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pellevive, David Tolls, me, account. Raymond, Ryan Young, and Naomi Sengel. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East.