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- [00:05]
A
The United States of America has a convicted felon as President of the United States. And now he is attacking the economy for sport. And let's talk to our guest, Senator Raphael Warnock from the great state of Georgia, to dive into this. Senator, how are you today? How's work going?
- [00:25]
B
Good morning. It's great to be here with you. Tough times, but we soldier on.
- [00:31]
A
All right, I want to put up a screenshot here of the Dow Jones this morning. And you see that line at the very end. So what we have are trillions of dollars leaving the 401ks of many, many Americans. And then they might be thinking, oh, well, I'll have Social Security. But as we know, the Republicans plan to attack Social Security as well.
- [00:56]
B
Yeah, we're seeing this all across the country. I'm seeing it firsthand in my state, this assault on Social Security. And as you point out, on top of that, this reckless policy around tariffs. No matter how you look at it, the Trump administration is busy waging war against hardworking Americans, against people who get up every day, who actually have to do things in order to make a living rather than just playing with money, which is the people he's surrounded by. And so we're seeing the impact of this. We've seen Social Security offices, announcements around them being closed in my state. And then when I call them to task on this, they made the announcement on their own DOGE website. They took it down, said, no, that's not really what's going on. But we shouldn't be surprised. Here is an administration where you have administration officials saying that Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, Elon Musk. And then you have the secretary of commerce who's a billionaire say that, well, if my mother in law misattacked, she wouldn't get upset about it. No big deal. How clueless and how detached from ordinary people can you be?
- [02:23]
A
That's, I mean, that's what I think every time I hear these people speak. I mean, Trump in the Rose Garden yesterday and he says this all the time, Senator. He always says groceries. It's an old fashioned word where you put things in a bag. And I think that grocery store, he doesn't know because he's, he was born of a multimillionaire and he inherited $500 million. He's never been grocery shopping. And then this is what gets me about these guys. Like they go after the legislative branch and they have all of your colleagues scared to death. And I know behind the scenes, I've heard from your, your Democratic colleagues that these Republicans are like, oh God, they're the worst. But they don't have the spine to speak out against this like you and your Democratic colleagues do. The Republicans don't. And it just gets me so much that, that he's attacked the legislative branch, he's attacking the judiciary, and I think on the economy is intentional. And a further way to, number one, devalue democracy and number two, a way that he can force people to kiss the ring. And imagine how insecure you have to be that you want to get rich people to come bend the knee to you, all of these corporations. And I think it's a really sick game that he's playing and it amazes me that he still has followers. What do you have to say about that?
- [03:46]
B
Well, as I said, this man and this administration is waging war against hard working people. We see the attacks on Social Security, we see the attacks on Medicaid, and all of this, all of these mass firings done not in service to the country, but done in service to what their ultimate goal is. And that is to give a massive tax cut to the wealthiest people in the country. I mean, folks who are watching me, don't be deceived. This tax cut is not for you. It's for the wealthiest of the wealthy in our country. And they're going to do this. In order to do this, they're going to, by the way, put a larger hole in the national debt. Add trillions of dollars to the national debt over 30 years. Imagine this, $37 trillion more dollars on our debt burdening our grandchildren and our children, the very young people who right now find it almost impossible to buy a home in this economy. And then yesterday's announcement around these tariffs, tariffs on everything coming in. This is a tax. That's what it is. He's cutting taxes for, for billionaires, raising taxes on almost everybody else. Because this tariff is gonna show up at a grocery store. A word that he seems to, that seems squint to him just shows you the amount of privilege. These taxes are gonna show up at a grocery store near you. This is real money and real pain for ordinary people. So what we've gotta do is we've gotta stand up, we've gotta straighten our backs. We cannot give in to those who are trying to weaponize despair. They're doing all these things that we're talking about. But here's the other thing they're doing. They're trying to convince us that he's already the king, that there is no need in fighting back and that's how autocrats win. They convince you that they have more power than they actually have. And then you start to. You stop fighting. You see the space, and that's what they want. It's dark right now, but it's in the darkest moments that the stars shine. And all of us have to find a way to shine in this moment, to raise our voice and remember that ultimately the power is in the people.
- [06:12]
A
I have a question regarding the upcoming midterms. We saw in Wisconsin that Elon Musk galvanized people to vote against him. And as we get closer to 2026, when these Republicans who are getting booed in every Sing town hall, will they start to stand up to Donald Trump because they know what he's doing is wrong as we get closer to their election, or are we. Am I just trying to see hope in something that's not there?
- [06:43]
B
Well, I think what we saw in Wisconsin, and I'm always reluctant to, you know, to play pundit here, I stay focused on my work here in the Senate. But, you know, we saw the outcome. We literally saw a man flood the zone with millions of dollars in Wisconsin over a judicial seat. And as you put it, he did a great job of organizing the people against him. I think people see this, they resent it. They said Wisconsin is not for sale. And I think we're going to see this over and over again. But even as we have defeated Elon Musk in Wisconsin, what we saw with this cruel display, it was repugnant and offensive. A grown man dressed in a black suit with a cheese head jumping up and down and handing out million dollar checks. As grotesque as that is, we have to remember that this is really just the extreme example of what's ailing our system, embodied in Citizens United. That awful decision where the Supreme Court said that corporations are people. And we are just seeing entirely too much dark money in our political system. It's squeezing the voices of our people out of their democracy. And that's how you end up with crazy laws that we've had on the books for years that, for example, literally made it illegal for Medicare to negotiate with Big Pharma on the prices of the drugs that they're selling us. Imagine that in a system that's supposed to be built in capitalism and on the market, it was actually illegal for Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. The person who wants to sell you something comes and says, you buy it and I'll tell you what the price is and you just pull out your wallet and pay it. That was the rule until we changed the law and forced through the Inflation Reduction act that we passed a couple years ago, Big Pharma, finally, to negotiate the price of these prescription drugs is real help for real people who right now are having to decide whether to buy prescription drugs or buy groceries.
- [09:03]
A
What I think is one of the biggest cons perpetuated in the American psyche is that the Republican Party is for the people, that the Republican Party is so good with the economy. And when you look at it, every time a Republican gets a hold of the economy, they wreck it every single time. And then a Democrat has to come in and clean it up. And my question for you is, how do we change the messaging as a party? Because the Republicans and you're Reverend and the Republicans tend to use people's faith to get them on board with their messaging. We're for family. And it's like, well, no, who isn't for family? Everybody is. You know, the fact that you have to say that is a red flag. But they tend to boycott people's faith. And then a lot working class people think, oh, they believe the way I believe. And inherently, there's this dissonance in the United States where of with people of faith. On the one hand, we've been raised as Americans to worship capitalism. And then on the other hand, if you're a Christian, Jesus spoke against the accumulation of wealth. And you have these two forces that cause this dissonance, dissonance. And I believe this kind of shared psychosis with tens of millions of Americans where now it's been, you know, it's, it's come to life here with this Trumpism. And as a reverend, I'm not a religious person, and that's why I can live in this country and openly say that that's my right. But as a reverend, I feel like this. My question for you is this religious messaging that the Republican Party has owned seems to have really damaged this country. And they've used it as a way to emotionally and spiritually blackmail the electorate. And I wanted to get your take on that.
- [10:51]
B
Well, honestly, I got in this crazy work of politics because of my faith. I've spent many years, long before coming to the Senate, standing on the side of the most marginalized members of the human family, ordinary people fighting for health care. Long before I came to the Senate, when the Affordable Care act was passed, I was fighting for Medicaid expansion in Georgia. I got arrested in the governor's office saying that we ought to expand Medicaid and not leave 600,000 Georgians in the healthcare gap. By the way, these people who are in the gap are the working poor. These are folks who work every day, keep our lives going, and we were denying them healthcare. So when I see people support those kinds of policies, honestly, I don't know what Bible they're reading. Look, I've got a PhD in theology. I spent a long time reading the Scripture, and the Scripture tells us that the strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. I'm a Matthew 25 Christian, where Jesus said, I was hungry, and you fed me, I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink. He says, I was sick and I was in prison, and you came to visit me. And then the question came, lord, when were you hungry? When were you sick? You're the Lord of Creation. When were you without clothes? When were you in prison? He said, well, inasmuch as you've done it unto the least of these my children, you've done it also unto me. And so my faith drives me to center the poor, to center those who are struggling, who are trying to make their lives work. And so, as I listen to the conversations very often in our public space, I have to come to the conclusion that Jesus must be the. The first and biggest victim of identity theft, because I don't know this Jesus that they're talking about, who was born in Bethlehem, raised in a ghetto called Nazareth, smuggled into Egypt as an undocumented immigrant, healed the sick, and never billed them for his services. That's what inspires my work every single day. And I think those of us who are here ought not cede that space to people who have hijacked the faith. And I'm not just talking about Christian faith. I'm talking about all of the great faith traditions. Talk about mercy and justice and compassion. There's some 2,000 verses in scripture that tell us how to treat the poor. You would know that listening to some of the preaching coming from American pulpits and listening to those in the sphere of politics who do awful things in the name of faith. Here's the thing. My faith is not a weapon that I use to punish other people. It's a bridge focused on bringing people together to do the big things, to imagine a future that embraces all of our children.
- [13:47]
A
I think the most important thing you just said is that your faith is not a weapon, because that's what it feels like. We live in a red state, a lot redder than Georgia. You live in a purple state. By evidence that you're a senator, it seems like faith is really weaponized. And I just want to advocate really quickly that there are people that are not religious that have always fought the good fight as well, like your colleague Senator Bernie Sanders, who has always had the same message decade after decade after decade, fighting for the marginalized, fighting for the working class. And it seems like the MAGA movement has hijacked your faith. And I hope that non religious people and really good people, religious people like you, that want to fight the good fight for marginalized people, for trans people, for gay people, for black people, for immigrants, that we can all unite together. Because I think that people that use their religion as a weapon is a cancer in this country and led us to this very moment where we're sitting here watching our whole country get dismantled. And so your voice is so important to galvanize voters of faith to get back on track, because I can tell you I'm from, you know, from the war zone here and deeply read buckle of the Bible belt, Oklahoma. These religious people are not. Well, right now. They seem to like to feast on the cruelty. They like what they see when. When Trump puts out those videos where they're carting people off to El Salvador.
- [15:14]
B
I think often those are the loudest voices. And I dare to say that even in Oklahoma and all over the country, they are Americans of goodwill. Some of them attend churches and temples and mosques. Some claim no particular faith tradition at all. But they are people of conscience, and that's what has always made our country great. And I think that in this moment, we've got to build a multiracial, multi generational, multi religious coalition of conscience that embraces people who claim no particular faith tradition but have moral courage. And we've got to not lose faith in our country and faith in each other.
- [15:56]
A
I love that. I do, too. I love it. I think you should be in charge of that coalition. I do, too. Join. I'll be the first to sign up.
- [16:03]
B
Come on, let's go. Let's do it.
- [16:05]
A
Yeah. And I think, you guys, I think that there's a vibe shift shout out to Cory Booker and what he did, and I know that you were there with him, and I feel like there's definitely a vibe shift. And I just. Thank you so much for coming on and having, you know, real conversations with us about what's going on with the United States, because so many people feel lost out there and they come to our channel and other channels just to feel like I'm not alone, I'm not a crazy person. So thank you for contributing to this moment of clarity and sanity for us.
- [16:35]
B
Thank you. Keep pushing. Keep the faith.
- [16:38]
A
We will. We'll keep it.