Pod Save America - Will Raphael Warnock Hear the Call?

Episode Date: May 10, 2026

Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock stops by the studio to talk to Jon about the Supreme Court's dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, his visit to an ICE detention facility, and whether the Democratic Party is doing enough to fight back against Trump. Then Jon and the senator, who serves as senior pastor at the congregation Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once led, discuss JD Vance lecturing Pope Leo on theology, increasing political violence in America, and what lessons from Dr. King can help us build a sustained political movement at this moment.

Welcome to Pod Save 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. 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 J.D. 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 CricketCon pre-sale begins next week, starting Tuesday, May 12th. Friends of the Pod subscribers can purchase tickets to CricketCon 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 CricketCon, head on over to Cricket.com and become a friend of the pod subscriber. All right. Here's Senator Raphael Warnock. 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 why this prophet, why this text, and why now? 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. You know, I saw that it was coming out, and I was like, I know it's not until mid-June, 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 reading that book, I was like, oh, I got to ask about that. Yeah. Well, you know, I return every Sunday morning to my pulpit. I still lead Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr. King preached.

And I have been preaching a sermon, literally, for the last few years in my own pulpit and pulpits 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 places smooth, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh, you'll 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, or reimagining of ourselves. And so I've got this book coming out. Thanks, John. 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, you know, wonderful environmental images, if you will, as a way of talking about equity, you know, rough, you know, the valley shall be exalted, mountains made low, putting us on a level playing field, crooked places made straight, talk about integrity, rough places smooth possibility, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed in everybody. we'll get to see it together, inclusivity. So equity, integrity, possibility, inclusivity. And I use that as a kind of values proposition on 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, there are crooked places all over the place.

And, you know, we see it at the center of our politics. There's a kind of moral rot that's eating away at the fabric of our country. It's all the way from the White House on down. And you're seeing this infection and its impact. in negative ways, the grift, the ways in which, you know, 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 has set the tone for others, just not to tell the truth.

And, you know, I don't, I don't know where to start. But we're seeing this, 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, 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. Whose 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 around, 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 us, oh, we can't afford to do that. And so as a result of that, literally the health care costs for millions of Americans,

some 22 million Americans doubled, on average, for some tripled, quadrupled. We can't afford health care. We can't afford child care. In fact, we heard Donald Trump literally saying to the mic, we need anything anybody would be listening. We can't afford that.

We can't afford child care. 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 the people's money like it's theirs. He said 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 one to two billion dollars 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 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 in the Senate, is what I preach about on Sunday morning. And it's what I talk about in this book, The Quicket Place is Made Straight. Is the poverty of moral imagination, obviously, it's going to

It's clearly a problem with Trump, with the White House, with a lot of elements of the Republican 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 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 is 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 I can't, you know, 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 sold a bill of goods. And I just, I think that, yeah, you know, 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 and then 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, a 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 out with a housing bill. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. And yet that bill passed our committee unanimously. Every Republican, every Democrat voted for it, passed the Senate overwhelmingly. We'll see what the folks do in the House.

I'm proud of it. It caps my provision caps what private equity has been doing here in California and Georgia all across the country, literally swooping in the community. 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 5 million units short, and on housing, it's a supply-side problem. And I think that comes moments. 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 gone, 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 passed. But I hope when we're in power, we will invest more, that 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 health care or just wages that are stagnant, wages 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 spiritual malady that lets someone like Donald Trump emerge. It'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 Calais, 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 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. 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 extol 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, we wouldn't be living as much as we are into what I see as the creed of this nation, e pluribus 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 suburbism. 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 him that he was going to lower their costs, that he's raised them. He told him 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, where when they hobbled Section 5, and now section two. And I don't want to go on and on about this, but sorry for the wrong answer. But, you know, when they, you know, 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, you know, the umpire, the, you know, who just sort of calling balls and strikes.

I think he has tarnished his legacy greatly. And the Supreme Court... And this has been his project for a while. This is his... We've learned it. 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 rainstorm 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 preclearance, that are no longer under preclearance. 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. West. They started doing things that, you know, make the lines longer in black and brown communities, purging people from the voter rolls, which Georgia'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 in 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. In that sense, 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. Part of how we can at least mitigate this gerrymandering that we're going to see is to overwhelm them by showing up. Pod Save America is brought you by Tommy John. What do I love about Tommy John?

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Zbiotics is backed with 100% money-back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they will refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to Zbiotics.com slash crooked and use the code crooked at checkout for 15% off. In response to the ruling, you said that you're tired of racism. And 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 these civil rights laws get unwound piece by piece? And you've been fighting for so long. Yeah, well, 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. And 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 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. You know, I've 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 the 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 a 21st century fight. but I refuse to be I get tired and that's true it's it's both physical and 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 in to 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 learned 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, the fight for your spirit. We cannot allow those who want to weaponize the spirit to win. We can't allow them to convince us that they've already won. And so that there's no need to fight. And here's why I'm a blessed man. I was John Lewis's pastor. And, you know, I got to know him. 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 he said, look,

we passed civil rights bill. And Dr. King said, great, I need a voting rights bill. Did not even skip a beat. Great. Go ahead, Pat you seven on the back.

Guess what? I need a voting 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 a meeting. The staff was feeling all demoralized and dejected. Andy 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 in power,

is about the power and the people. And that's 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 are 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. And 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 of black men, especially younger black men, have stopped voting for Democrats. Some are staying home. Some, I'm sure, you know, voting suppression. Voter suppression has clearly played a role. But more are 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, we have to, we have to resist

the false dichotomy between standing up for women and standing, and standing, and, being a very clear voice against misogyny and sexism, which I talked about at length a couple of Sundays ago in my pulpit. And at the same time, seeing the ways in which men and young men in particular, young black men in 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, 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, become the pastor of, you know, fairly famous church, become a United States center.

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 weeks ago, as I 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 nearly enough. and I raise 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 it's a red town where they're building a 10,000. They bought a warehouse. They want to put a 10,000 bed detention center in a 5,000 citizen town. and those folks even, they voted for Trump, but they didn't vote for that, right? But I'm worried about what that means.

Think about it. Our government's getting ready to warehouse human beings. Literally put them in a warehouse, 10,000 people. By the way, across the street from the elementary school. And they want to do this all over the country. It's a moral atrocity. But here's what I also know from our recent history. 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 the years 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 in communities like, you know, in Baltimore and Philadelphia

and Atlanta and South Central L.A. And we're under Republican and Democratic administrations, if we're honest, men have been warehoused. And now I think we're seeing some of the children of those men who've been warehoused. 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.

Yeah, it felt like we were for a while on a path where even folks on the right were willing to do something. thing about, you know, rehabilitation, prison reform, criminal reform. 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 very 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. The United States of America warehouses 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 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 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 we're seeing the results of the, uh, of that.

And what I would like to see us do in this moment as 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 what I mean when I say we suffer not

from a poverty of resources, but of moral imagination. We need to reimagine who we can be. You said something a couple of minutes ago that's stuck with me about agency. And I think it's so important. And you also talked about some of the jargon and the Democratic Party's language.

I wonder sometimes, like, do you ever worry that the Democratic Party's argument that the 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 don't know that they need us to tell them that they're living it.

Every day people know that the system is stacked against them. They know it in their bones, and 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, something, 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 people, and I do think it's overstated. Donald Trump didn't have this whole 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 jump on it. But they weren't overwhelming.

One is too many, but they weren't overwhelming numbers of black men voting for Donald Trump. But I do think 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. Trump with this dystopian vision of the country emerging. Here's what the Trump voters and, 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 people do feel some of that. And I've seen it up close, you know, now that I'm in the Senate. 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 capped the cost of prescription drugs. My own bill capped the cost of insulin, no more than $35 of out-of-pocket cost 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 so that Medicare... To undo the other bad law that we passed in 2003, I guess. Like, what kind of capitalism is that for folks, you know, what kind of capitalism? is that for folks, you know, what kind of capitalism is that where the buyer gets, where the seller gets to tell you the price or something and you don't, and you don't get to discuss it? Like, what kind of capitalism? But that shows you how rigged the system is. And so we addressed it. We passed a bill 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 only speak for myself. 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, that I get to represent them, even the ones who didn't vote for me, I get to fight for those. Most of those people in Social Circle, Georgia, where at detention centers, 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, 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 love this job enough to sell my soul. You know, like I have an idea. outside of being a senator. I'm a pastor. I'm the father of two amazing little children who are nine and seven

and they're constantly telling me what to do. You know, I'm a lot of things. And I was an activist before I did, I got elected, I got arrested in the building where my office is before I had an office that I got arrested there as an activist. Also a building, I believe, named after a Georgia senator.

It was like an arch segregationist that now that you sit in his seat. 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 love doing the work,

but they don't need it. Yeah, we do need that. Pod Save 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's shelf life. Think about it. And while you do, let me tell you about Sundays. Sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Torrey Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers

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and get 50% off your first order, or you can use code Crooked 50 at checkout that's 50% off your first order at Sundaysfor Dogs.com slash crooked 50, sundays for dogs. com slash crooked 50, or use code Cricket 50 at checkout. You said something a few weeks ago to my pal Jen Saki that stuck with me,

which is that when J.D. Vance told the Pope to be careful, stay in his lane. I know, it drove me insane. You said that... I didn't just roll my eyes, did it? That's not a good look. You know, I was doing worse than that. That's not a look for the pastor in the Senate.

Well, you made a comment, you said that's how fascists talk. And you also brought up Reich Christians, who were the German pastors who capitulated to Hitler by deciding the appropriate place of the church was in personal piety, not systemic injustice. I'd love to know what made you draw that connection. When you say someone like Vance is talking like fascist, when you mention Bonhofer and the Wright Christians as a comparison, like, where does that argument come from in you? 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 theologian.

I, you know, I've studied that period. I wrote a thesis on King and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhofer was part of the very little Christian resistance that Hitler got. Most of the church in Germany capitulated to Hitler. They became Reich Christians. And so, you know, no two periods are the same, and I'm not, you know, conflating it in that sense, but there are lessons to be learned. I have to say that, that in my view, J.D. 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 his running mate. He ran a campaign, focused on one, to be his running mate. So if Trump is America's Hitler and he campaigned to be his running mate, what does that make J.D. Vance? I think we saw a glimpse of that cravingness in recent weeks when J.D. Vance, who is a recently converted Catholic, had the unmitigated audacity to lecture the Pope on how to be the Pope. The Pope is doing what we need more religious leaders to do.

And that is to bring a kind of moral question to who we are. And he was literally advocating for peace. Imagine that. Which is what all the popes do. Yeah. I just, I, well, you know, I just couldn't help but be struck by J.D. Vance, the newly converted Catholic, who wrote a whole book about his conversion, which is interesting. Then, then turning around and saying that, you know, when the Pope is talking about theology, he ought to be careful. talking about theology,

he ought to stay in his lane. What are you talking about? It was fascinating to me, even from a theological perspective, and you hit on it, and obviously this was your thesis, but this sort of divide between personal piety

and systemic injustice, and you could tell from what J.D. 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 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, that the left can kind of rally around. And I wonder if you think sometimes you worry that Democrats have sort of ceded, 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 language.

I worry about it deeply. It's something that I, that I, that I'm thinking about a lot, because we have the historical lesson, right? And I don't want to keep going here, you know, because no two historical peers are alike, but it was J.D. Manns who said that Trump is America's Hitler, so he said that. 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 interpersonal 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 it's 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 potentates, to leave that to politicians. And it's dangerous for those of us who are concerned about these. 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. You know, 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, you know, 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 snapcuts. 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 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, which is just as blasphemous. Oh, 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 in the, 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 whether 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. Yeah. One fellow Democrat who hasn't seated that that territory is James Telerico, 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 said back in March that you hope we'll have yet another pastor in the United States Senate. Why does it matter to have another pastor in that chamber? What does, um, what does, um, why does it matter? Um, what does, um, 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 ask 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 whether 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 unapologetically, you're gonna, you're gonna, you know, alienate certain voters. And I don't know how else to, I don't know who else to be other than myself.

And I'll, you know, I'll, you know, I'll tell you that the folks who, you know, they put around me because I was running for office, I'd never run for office before. My comps team used to put this thing on my memos when I'd get ready to do interviews and that kind of thing. It said, remain the reverend. And every time when I would see that, I would laugh. I'm like, well, what else I'm going to be?

I'm glad you didn't tell me to be somebody else because I don't know who else to be. Easy instruction. Other than myself. But I, you know, 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. You know, what I'm always trying to do is open the tent, widen the tent, so that everybody is a part of it. And what I discovered was that the people of Georgia found that refreshing both Democrats and Independence. And 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 Christian. 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. And 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. So I bring my values and not my creeds to my work as a senator.

And I think those values are resonant 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.

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Dr. King was the apostle of nonviolence in this country, and it was as theological as much as it was a political strategy. He believed nonviolence 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 Pelosi, the Minnesota legislature's, legislators, United Healthcare CEO, Charlie Kirk, the multiple Trump assassination attempts, including one at the correspondent center a few weeks ago. What do you think, King, the apostle of nonviolence in this country, would say to America right now?

He used to say that, you know, an ethic of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. And, you know, I think that's an important lesson in this moment, which is why, you know, 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. I've condemned other forms of violence, certainly against Paul Pelosi 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 or not Dr. King was a force of good in the world. I'd 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, he could have used those terribly dramatic moments. He could have used those moments to bring us together.

He could have reminded us of who we are when we stand together. And instead, he just leaned into, you know, more arguments about all of this is coming from the left. And this is not a difference between, you know, right and left. 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 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 that could be shamed, that like an audience whose conscience could be reached and changed by the sight of suffering. And, you know, I have heard this too. I have argued with folks on the left about this as well, which is like, you know, 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 the 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. You know, he reminded of America of what it said about itself, even in that very last sermon before he lost his own life, tragically to political violence.

He said, you know, 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, you know, women who've given birth know that contractions are necessary for birth.

And my hope is that by continuing to speak the truth, moral suasion, but also, you know, the other part of the civil rights movement is there are ways in which you force people to the table. Birmingham wasn't all moral suasion. It was, let's see if these shopkeepers think it's a good idea to continue to march. marginalized 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, in this tough moment 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 discipline, and King certainly knew about that in 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 and strategic. Also, can I give you a little bit of hope, too?

Because I live in Atlanta, so I get to hang around Andy Young and John Lewis before he died and C.T. Vivian. I mean, I walked around with Giants. So here's the other thing I want us to think about in this moment. Because they don't 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. not easy, right? And I've got some ideas, you've got ideas, there's things that

we know we need to do. But they're, you know, I mean, I think that's a mark also good leadership. To be honest, that there's, life is hard, and these problems are complex, and 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 Jose L. Williams and Stokely Carmichael, you know, and Andy Young, all in the room, and and thesis, and the kind of healthy arguments that are needed to get to the right answer. I guess what mattered is that 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. It's 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 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 any of us ought to be doing is getting in the fray. You know, I won't quote a pastor. Roosevelt had this thing about the man in the arena. And so another thing 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 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 sermon are you 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 mamas feel good. Whatever else you do, if you fail at that, you have failed. You got to make sure that the mothers and the grandmothers.

It's a nice and easy target there. Mama and Big Mama need to know. And godmothers 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, a 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 we, you know, but whoever it was that mothered 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 to fight for her children. That is very true. That is very true. Senator Warnock, Reverend Warnock, thank you so much for joining Potsave America. and come back again soon. Good to be with you. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production.

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