Trump's Pump and Dump (feat. Sen. Raphael Warnock)

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Jon Lovett.

I'm Tommy Vittor.

On today's show, we're going to talk about Mike Johnson's disappearing House majority that also might get rid of him. Bibi Netanyahu's beef with Joe Biden over the UN ceasefire resolution. The internal NBC revolt over the network's decision to hire former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. And later, Georgia Senator. Raphael Warnock stops by the studio to talk to Lovett about 2024 Gaza, TikTok, and more.

If you're a Pod, Save America listener in line at voir dire, stay in line.

Don't wear your shirt.

Don't wear your shirt.

Don't wear the shirt. So Trump's lawyers tried to use the release of new documents from federal prosecutors as an excuse to delay the trial. But Judge Juan Marchand argued that the defense has had plenty of time, so we're getting at least one Trump trial before the election. At least one. At least one.

Well, as they say, I have a lot of cash. You know I do because you looked at my statements. I mean, you've been examining my statements for a long time, and I have much more than that in cash. But I would also like to be able to use some of my cash to get elected. They don't want me to use my cash to get elected.

I just love at the end, when he goes, Trump. I wouldn't trade that brand for any other brand in the world. Trump.

Very funny if he just walked into the courtroom and was like, an IOU, 20% of my brand.

Can't buy bread with brand.

So huge bummer that we won't get to see Titch James seize Trump Tower. It sucks. We don't get anything.

We don't get anything.

No fun.

I wanted that building. Yep. That was going to be our building.

Now.

Titch James, who doesn't have a political bone in her body, was going to get that building for us.

Trump was fundraising off the fact that she was going to take the building. And now today he's fundraising off the fact that it just says, there's a big fundraising email that just says, Trump Tower, still mine. That sucks. What is that fundraising for? You already got the tower back and you seemingly have plenty of cash.

I mean, you heard it in the clip. there. He keeps talking about putting his own money into the campaign. I couldn't tell if he was trying to suggest that he's going to put some of his personal funds behind his election effort, which I doubt he will actually do given history, or if he just now talks about campaign donations like it's his own personal cash.

I took it to mean the first part, which is, he hasn't done that since 2016,, but he did do that in 2016 and then obviously he did in 2020.

Here's what I took it to mean. I took it to mean he knows he's about to write a massive check and he's going to say, I need your donations because these political hacks are taking my money, not to hurt me for anything I did wrong or to punish me, but to stop me from being able to support my campaign. Will you step in to make up for what these, these Jew prosecutors have done to me?

Okay. Okay.

The other thing I thought was, you sort of referenced it, I mean, it's just, it's gotta be the most distracting way to possibly run a presidential campaign. You gotta remember all these judges' names, you gotta read all these documents, you gotta spend months and months in court, you gotta wage your little PR wars against Tish, James and Goran.

I mean, we, we should get into the schedule here. So if it starts April 15th, that's jury selection, that'll take about two weeks. And then the case will probably last, estimates range now from like late May into June. So he has to appear in court from 9.30 AM to 4.30 PM, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, gets Wednesday off, though, you know, you're not traveling too far if you have to get back there for Thursday. So that's a lot of the campaign.

It's not the primary, right? I mean, that's when we had the big rally around Trump effect within the Republican party. I just, I don't know that you can assume that will happen again, at least not with swing voters.

I also continue to think that the kind of prospect of Trump being on trial will feel very different than Trump actually being on trial, where there's images and sounds and all the machinations that go along with the, with like people's, that go along with people's imaginations and knowledge of like how the criminal justice system works. And that will, that will make him look very bad to normal people who will just be tuning into the campaign.

Trump, like the rest of us, is just adjusting to a post pandemic hybrid work schedule.

That's true.

Oh, that's right.

That's true. Three days in a couple of days out. It's going to limit his.

I wonder if that's, I wonder if he's going to say that to the judge and be like, can I do some remote, remote court?

Why not give it a whirl?

It's going to be a hard case to prove. Hard case to prove. Proving falsified business records actually is the easy part for Alvin Bragg, though that's just a misdemeanor in New York, unless you falsify business records to cover up another crime. And in this case, that other crime is not reporting his hush money payment to the federal election commission, which would be a federal crime, not a state crime. If it's judged a crime at all, which, and it's a crime that DOJ declined to charge him with.

Yeah, for sure. And I'm sure the open-minded Manhattan jury will approach this and try to, try to be as fair as they possibly can to Donald Trump.

It is interesting, Brett.

We get nothing. We get nothing. The one thing that's kind of cool is all the juries are coming from DC and Manhattan. Like that, that's like, we get one perk.

Oh, I know. Meanwhile, Eileen Canada down in Florida is like, how can I spike this thing as humanly possible?

So Trump also said at the end of that sort of press avail after courtroom today that he's going to pay cash for the bond. He said, that's what he says. He's also a little richer on paper this week. Thanks to his shitty Twitter knockoff truth social. The company lost $49 million last year, but it just started trading on the NASDAQ Monday under the stock ticker DJT.

I reject the characterization of this as a Ponzi scheme, because in a Ponzi scheme, you have to pay out some money to your early investors with funds from the later ones. And I don't see that.

Right, right. A Ponzi scheme involves, like a couple, there's a couple of rungs of the pyramid that do okay. You can't just have the top. That's just, that's just stealing from people. I just keep thinking about that scene from the Sopranos where, where the two henchmen are like beating the shit out of some stockbroker, saying, we're pushing what Bistex, just some boiler room somewhere.

Yeah. I mean, this is like just a way to siphon cash from Trump fans. Right. I think, or anyone who wants to really buy influence. It's like, if you hate Trump, if you hate big tech, if you hate the elites, buy some shares at DJT.

But like this, the stock price here is basically just rising or falling based on Trump's popularity, betting on Donald Trump. It's like a bunch of his supporters sort of did this, and then some other people who just want to do like a pump and dump kind of thing here. Yeah. Right. Like that's, that's what this is.

I mean, some people, some people will make money. Some people will lose money. I, my question is like, can Trump get money out of this before it collapses? If it collapses, like Kenny, start selling bits of it just to get some of the money out before the reality of the company not making any money, by the way, is to face with a stock price.

I should have said it's a six month lockup. so he can sell his shares, but the board can vote for, to change that. And the board is made up of Don Jr and Linda McMahon, and all of his, all of his goons are on the board. So, you know, right.

True. True. Social is not a trading on a multiple, on its revenues. That is, that is absolutely true.

The revenue was $3 million last year.

Yeah. This is not Berkshire Hathaway. This is a 5 billion active users on truth social selling scammy ads to people for like toenail fungus. Uh, what I'd like to, uh, that went a little down, trip down memory lane, the initial pitch for truth media and technology group, which is a company that's merging with, uh, uh, the other company, the SPAC, to form DJT, was true social. And then they had a Netflix like a streaming service, a Trump streaming service.

Did you guys see, uh, we also learned, uh, that the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that merged with, uh, truth social's parent company is, uh, Jeff Yass. The, uh, you might've heard that name recently, because he's also major investor in tech talk. He owns a bunch of bite dance, the parent company for tech talk. And, uh, he also happens to be a major donor to club for growth. club for growth is paying Kelly and Conway to lobby against the tech talk ban.

It's just, um, we just, it's the, it's his ability to sort of dance between the raindrops for years and years and years that just, the man doesn't get wet. Maybe you'll finally get wet.

Yes. 90, 91 raindrops. Yeah.

Where? Let's, let's get this guy wet. What the fuck? What the fuck?

Let's get this guy wet.

I don't know either. Sure.

You know what I'm talking about. Okay. Yeah. No, I, I, I, yeah, sure.

True social. He's got, he's got $3 billion in his valuation.

Yeah. Well, he's got a bunch of idiots who were just like, sure. I mean, you said like by, by influence, I don't even know if they're buying influence. They're just like Donald Trump's fucking Jesus Christ.

No, I think it's both. I think mostly it's Trump fans who, like, want to own a share of DJT to stick it to all the elites who don't like him. But then, if you want to siphon money to Trump, this is a very efficient way to do it. You buy a ton of shares of his little company now. I mean, you could, previously, if you were a Saudi delegation, you just stayed at the Trump hotel for a month longer than you needed to and you just let the room sit vacant.

Or did a deal with Jared.

Yeah. This is a new, more efficient way, potentially.

Unreal. One more fun Trump thing. Did you guys see, um, that he congratulated himself on truth social, uh, the multibillion dollar company, uh, for winning two trophies at his own golf club, said, it's my great honor to be at my golf club to receive the club championship trophy and the senior club championship trophy. I won both.

If you believe Trump is a scratch golfer, I've got a stock on the NASDAQ to sell you.

Are you guys surprised that he would take credit for winning a senior open?

I thought about that. Yeah.

It's very, uh, I think that, yeah, I, I'm also just sort of like, so you're at your own golf club and you get in the tournament for all the customers and you're like, I'm going to wipe the floor with these people.

Then you win and then you congratulate yourself about winning at your golf club, at your own guy. Like what? Maybe.

Yeah.

Listen more. You guys are making me realize this is very, uh, Kim Jong Il. He shot a 38 under par, including 11 holes in one, the first time he ever played. So, setting him aside, uh, I do think Trump has won something like 20 club championships, but only at clubs he owns.

Yeah.

But in some cases he didn't actually play in the tournament. Like one guy, one time he ran into a dude who had just won the tournament and he challenged him to like a nine hole match, and then he beat it and then he declared himself the co-champion.

Like how, um, like how, like you could, like, each side could send their best champion to fight in the middle instead of having a big battle.

I mean, he's facing multiple criminal charges for cheating in an election. So I can't imagine him cheating at golf.

There's that old joke about the golfer, you know, you're, you're golfing with somebody and they lose their ball in the woods and they're looking, and they're looking and they can't find it. And you go over to hit your golf ball and then all of a sudden you hear from the woods, I found it, I found it and he hits his ball, gets it right next to the tee. And the question you face is, do you call the man a cheater or do you keep his ball in your pocket?

Rick Riley from, Rick Riley from Sports Illustrated wrote a whole book about Trump cheating at golf. It's a funny thing because it's very polarizing. I think his fans find it hilarious. Like they know he's lying. This is nonsense, right?

Yeah, I think it's a good point. I don't know if it does. I mean, Joe Biden, our boy, Joe Biden had a really funny tweet. He quote, tweeted the truth and he just said, congratulations, Donald, quite the accomplishment. That's the tone.

Yeah. No, but I know, but Tommy, I know you mean because it's like, I feel like, but wait, weren't we all taught growing up that like, that's not strength, that that's weakness, right? Like that, that's not, it's whiny. It's an embarrassing way to behave. that like being that much of a braggart is not like cool or how a real kind of person, right.

Remember he was going to, he was going to award himself the congressional medal of freedom when he was president.

And instead he just gave it to Rush Limbaugh.

Yeah.

Right. RIP. All right. Moving on. The house of representatives is taking a well-earned two week recess that Republicans may not want to come back from.

Let's just, I mean, if you want to talk. performance of speaker Johnson, I'm as dismayed and, and disappointed as anybody.

In the house, Congressman, you think things are good for the Republican party?

I think that we get along better than most people would think. I think that, look, I, I, I try to, uh, you understand why I'm asking, right?

Kevin McCarthy abandoned you. Ken Buck abandoned you. And Mike Gallagher just announced on Friday that he's going to resign on April the 13th. You got a one vote majority. What's going on in the house?

Well, I don't know why Kevin left. And I'm not sure I know why Ken or Mike or Mike left. Mike's leaving. Ken left.

Well, when you put it that way, Mike Johnson, welcome to the resistance.

If you had what you had read, just sort of walking through what, what Johnson is facing, you could have just until you referenced McCarthy, you could have just replaced the word Johnson with McCarthy. And it is the exact, exact same situation, exact same politics, same bills, still the Ukraine funding. It's exact same. We've been in the same place for 10 months, 10 years.

No one is happy with Republicans controlling the house. Not even house Republicans. I mean, it's just like, they can't keep a speaker. They can't agree on anything as a caucus, let alone a house. Like we, it's like people are on another two years of this.

Well done guys.

It's going to be the least productive Congress in history by a lot. Uh, basically, all they've done is barely kept the government open, renamed a few post offices. They get all these younger members retiring, and not just retiring, but then, like leaving early. They don't even, they can't even wait until the end of their term.

I think, and there's a real game theory problem here because once the majority got this low, you have to leave quick, because if you want to leave and take a job before your term is up and if you wait too long, suddenly leaving to get your whatever high paid consulting job or something, turns the house over to the Democrats, right? Gallagher, is the last person who can leave without causing them to go to what an even split of fucking clusterfuck. You know, there's seven other people that are like, ah, fuck.

Yeah. They all want to be lobbyists.

They want to make the money.

Ken Buck's out. He, he already left, and he signed on to the, uh, Democrats, Ukraine, uh, discharge petition right before he walked out the door. So these people are just leaving. They're like leaving with like a couple of fuck you's to leadership. Yeah.

I mean, the argument for it is that America is our accountability partner and that we need a speaker and a Congress in place to do serious things, because we're serious, responsible people and we've run the government and we're watching too much polls and that too. Yeah. That's the argument for it. I don't know that. I believe that.

So if you go back and look at what this conversation, which we've had before around McCarthy look like, Democrats were eager for McCarthy to keep his job, to get funding for Ukraine, award more federal projects and democratic districts. And some went so far as to demand that right-wing Republicans be removed from the rules committee. Some wanted a promise that GOP campaign committees will not spend money to defeat politically vulnerable Democrats. I think that's probably a stretch a lot up to including, you. start from a, you start from, it's just a negotiating position demanding co-chairs for committees.

I don't know if any of them have enough money for the private security they'll need to hire if they may, if they take that vote, uh, I think it's just, you want the only thing they have left to do before the election, because of course you can't, you can't be legislating.

nothing else is going to happen.

They all have senioritis because it's an election year. So they need to get Ukraine done. Yep. And, uh, the funding bill that they just passed, uh, goes to, uh, September 30th. So you don't want another shutdown in October, right before the election.

I guess. But like, so we're just a little twerp, just, yeah, like what else are we doing?

Well, here's the alternative. Well, the alternative is.

That's what we're getting. By the way, we're getting a version of that now.

The alternative is we lose Mike Johnson. Then we get, uh, you know, Andy Biggs or someone even crazier. Ukraine doesn't get done. There's no Ukraine funding, and then we get another shutdown.

But maybe you also get another three weeks of disastrous infighting and votes, and embarrassment and humiliation. Right. The reason. Republicans, and there's some political benefits. Now I don't.

You get content for us.

That would be the argument. But I will say, like what we would be, look, I, I, I think the reason people want to figure out a way to do this for Ukraine is because they genuinely believe that we have a moral obligation to fund Ukraine. But it is also a situation in which the reason Republicans would be desperate for Democrats to help them is because it would once again point out that they are a group of people that cannot govern the country and shouldn't be trusted. with this responsibility. And for the longterm health of the country, we want to win the house.

They're sitting at 11% approval ratings. So I feel like that, I feel like the country's got the message, but you think, right?

Yeah, maybe, maybe. Yeah.

No, I just look, I think that I get if you're a legislator, if you're a democratic legislator and you believe that it's not just a moral obligation to find Ukraine, but it is in our national security interest to fund Ukraine, then a couple of days of Republicans looking like fucking clowns is not as worthwhile as getting this done and actually funding Ukraine.

If you're a serious person. Get the Ukraine funding and then say, fucking, fuck them. Just like, let's get the Ukraine funding. Then we do our own motion to vacate.

I think.

Let's trick these bastards.

I'm sure there's a lot of very serious people in Congress, mostly in our party, who care deeply about this issue. I do. There is an open question, though. If, if Johnson is saved with a bunch of democratic votes, how does Trump react to that? He might have a meltdown.

It'll be, it's, it's, it's, Trump has different ways of sort of, uh, breaking off relationships. There's the like, I'm going to, I'm going to blast you on truth, social, right?

I'm going to bury you at my golf course.

This one's just going to be like, he's going to forget that he ever knew Mike Johnson kind of thing. That guy, whoever, it was like a quick five month thing.

And it's the menace from the stage of the speech.

He was sort of weird. What was with that covenant? Nice thing. That was weird. That's what you'll be hearing Trump say.

I like that.

So there were some big developments with Israel's war in Gaza. on Monday, the UN security council was able to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire after the U? S abstained for the first time. This allegedly pissed off Bibi Netanyahu, who then canceled a planned visit by his senior advisors to the white house with the Biden administration, said the abstention isn't a change in policy and reportedly told Israel in advance that they don't see the resolution as binding. Tommy, what did you make of all this?

So this resolution basically just reflects the longstanding Biden policy that they've been working towards for a while, which gets a, it's a ceasefire and a release to the hostages. It calls for both. Um, they abstained rather than vote for the resolution because some issues with the wording and also because it didn't condemn Hamas for the October 7th attack. So I mean, I think some others, it's interesting that the administration says it's not legally binding. I think others would argue it is, but in practice there's no enforcement mechanism without another vote by the security council.

And this is just a determination that by administration can make itself, and Congress doesn't necessarily have a role here.

Yeah. I think there's a termination that'll be made by the state department and the defense department in something like 45 days from receiving these, uh, assurances.

And then I think Biden makes a call because I noticed that, um, I saw Bernie Sanders released a statement because there was 4 billion in military aid for Israel as part of the spending agreement, though, I would imagine that's authorized by Congress or appropriated by Congress. And then the administration, if it decides to make this determination, it could probably just not send that.

I mean, I think they could probably just find ways to slow down or cut off future weapons transfers, but yeah, I mean that, that the big spending bill not only included 3.

Finally, fun times at NBC news right now, uh, after the network's executives decided to hire former RNC chair and election denier, Ronna McDaniel as a contributor for a reported $300,000 a year, journalists who work at NBC revolted, including an on-air rebuke from the network's chief political analyst, Chuck Todd. Chuck's meet. the press successor, Kristen Welker, had just interviewed McDaniel, though Welker didn't know when she booked her that NBC had already hired her.

That's awkward.

Uh, here's a clip of that interview and then what Chuck said to Welker afterwards, do you?

disagree with Trump saying he's going to free those who've been charged?

I do not think people who committed violent acts on January 6th should be freed.

So you disagree with that? He's been saying that for months, Ronna, why not speak out earlier?

Why just speak out about that now? when you're the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right? This is what I believe.

Look, let me deal with the elephant in the room.

Yeah.

I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation, because I don't know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC news. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract.

Good for Chuck.

Way to go, Chuck. Kristen Welker did a great job in the interview too.

I know.

It was a 20 minute grilling.

I know. I watched it to prep for this because I hadn't actually seen the whole thing on Sunday and I was like, wow. She did a really great job.

That was a really good job.

What did you guys think of the uproar? And what do you think compelled NBC to hire her in the first place?

So I think it was at one point in that interview with Welker, she says Biden won fair and square, right? So she's finally saying Biden won fair and square, but all along she was just saying it. She was doing what she had to do as RNC chair.

Well, Welker played a clip of her talking to Chris Wallace just last year, where she said, quote, I don't think Biden won it fair. I don't. I'm not going to say that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just found it to be a baffling decision. I mean, she just got tossed out of Trump world. She does not seem well dialed into, like normie Republican world. I'm sure the Nikki Haley team probably does not like Ronna very much. I don't know that she's dialed into the Hill.

It does illustrate the larger problem with having a, we just need a pro Trump voice, because pro Trump voices, again, they tell you that the election was stolen and you just have to draw a line somewhere. Like it is, look, if NBC wants to waste, waste its money on someone who's not even a skilled propagandist, like, it's their right to make a dumb business decision. And I do think like political diversity on a network news is important and have people hash it out, argue it out and stuff like that, but you just have to draw a line somewhere and the line has to be burning the stadium down. Like you said, the line has to be like, if you've been telling lies about an attempted coup, we're going to draw the line there. And if that's, and even if that represents the views of millions of Americans, that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be on fucking network news and you have to fact check the person every time they're on.

Well, I, I, I do think, yeah, I, I also, I, it does sound like just from some of the kind of coverage that Ronna Romney, McDaniel, got sorted. Romney kind of interpersonally, right? Like that she's, Oh, she's from that tradition. So she's one of the normal Republicans that we're still allowed to have on. And sure, she kind of had to defend Trump, but, but once she's on our air, she'll be a much more reasonable person.

Four more years. No. Yeah. I take that back. Yeah.

And again, like, you know, Alyssa Farrah Griffin, she was in Trump world. She was in the Trump white house till the very end. And when she left and she became a contributor, you know, I think I probably criticized it myself. Right. Like we did.

I mean, it's just, it was take one for the team, defending a coup. There was a report, I think it was a Maggie Haberman story in the times about, uh, about Trump trying to get the primaries to be over early to kind of push Nikki Haley aside. And it was midway through the story. It mentions almost in passing that Trump called Rana McDaniel and said, Hey, can we not only cancel the debates, but can we cancel the elections altogether?

And she put out a statement.

And so the idea that, like, Oh, you know, you know, she was just a being a team player. She was complicit in this for years, by the way, that doesn't mean like, have her on meet.

the press. Chris and Welker's interview with her was fantastic. Just if she's a paid contributor, that, and again for NBC, that means every time she's on the air, you have to make sure she's not lying and you have to like, fact check her. I mean, it's just ridiculous.

There's also just a lot of former Trump officials at this point that they could go to, that are more compelling and have more credibility and are better dialed into this world.

Yeah, that is also true. It's a, it's a real head scratcher. It's a real, just, I don't think she'll be on Matt out tonight. So what do you guys think?

And the CNBC is going to burn her at the stake. It's going to be a live town hall. Yeah.

Yeah. Like Nicole Walls, is like, is a, is like nailing her demands to the door of 30 Rock.

Yeah. They're going to drown her like a witch.

Does Rana float?

I guess we'll just leave it there, huh?

Yeah.

Okay.

Great place to end.

Let's go to the interview. Yeah. I was going to say, we're going to do a couple of housekeeping items before. we're going to give that to Senator Warnock to make sure we hook her right to him. We had a new episode of Inside 2024 out on Thursday.

Joining us in studio, a man who's won elections in the critical state of Georgia four times in the last four years, five if you count the primary.

Five times, but who's counting?

United States Senator and pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock. Welcome back to the pod.

Great to be back.

It's good to see you. Last time I saw you, I was in Atlanta. Now you're in LA. That's right. Our turf.

I was on your turf the last time. I was on your show.

I guess that's true. How does it feel to finally not be running in an election in Georgia? Do you have nightmares where you wake up and you're on the ballot and you forgot and you're in your underwear and your teacher's there?

Something like that.

You do. actually. You do wake up in the night thinking you've forgotten. you're up for re-election.

Look, I ran three years straight. My name was on the ballot five times, if you count. The jungle primary, which nobody remembers, that when I entered my first race, I had 20 opponents.

20 opponents.

I think it's easy to forget. now, Democrats and Republicans. Here we are. I am glad that I am not running this year, but I'm very committed to making sure that we maintain our majority in the Senate, hopefully expand it, flip the House, and send Joe Biden and Kamala Harris back to the White House.

One problem of you not being on the ballot is we don't have your coattails.

Well, listen, in this business, you pay attention to the polls, but I think it's a strategic error to be obsessed with the polls. I call it the polar coaster. And look, it's still relatively early in the election season. I think we'll see these polls go up and down. And here's what we know.

You see these polls, and people often believe Joe Biden is ineffective, in part because of age, but they also have no idea how much has gotten done. Do you find that when you're out there campaigning? How do we get the word out about some of the achievements that make Joe Biden worthy of a second term?

Well, you know, Democrats aren't always that good at talking about what we've gotten done. I think we stay really, really focused on getting things done. But here are the facts. You know, I think about this as a senator. I think about this as we consider our base.

After the State of the Union, you compared Joe Biden to the boxer Joe Louis. Is that because he was feisty or because you also hope he beats the ever-loving shit out of a Nazi?

Listen, he came out fighting that night. He came out fighting and he never let up. And I think he'll continue to do that through November. You know, I chastise you for your language, except that when the Affordable Care Act passed, Joe Biden famously said that it was a big deal.

A big deal of some kind.

I won't say it the way he said it.

I thought you were going to chastise me for calling Max Schleming a Nazi, when he was simply a German who was forced to be a part of Nazi propaganda. But we don't have to get into the history. We don't have to get into the history.

I think I said that night what my point was.

OK.

The man came out fighting. He never let up.

Two of the biggest black congregations in your state are working together to get out the vote. You are pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, as we discussed. What do you think the role of the faith community can be? What should it be in this election?

Oh, it's huge. And I think that's the case for all of our elections. I have often said that I believe that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. I really believe that. It is born of this notion that we were created in what theologians call the imago Dei, or the image of God.

So you talked about people valuing themselves, whether it's through faith or just simply finding a sense of purpose, sense of meaning. Church attendance is declining. In 2020, Gallup found that, for the first time, a majority of the country no longer said they are members of a church, a mosque, or a synagogue.

My church is actually growing and not declining. And it's generationally diverse. And, to my joy, it is increasingly racially diverse. Dr. King used to say that the most segregated hour in America was 11 o'clock Sunday morning.

Yeah. Well, I talked about this with a rabbi, actually this weekend, Rabbi Sharon Brous. And she talks-.

A friend of mine, yeah.

And she talks about the fact that one explanation she has is that there are a lot of people who feel like there's churches and synagogues and temples that do a lot of ritual that feels disconnected. And then there's people trying to appeal to people that are extreme, that are more kind of radical, and that that pushes young people away too. But that there has to be something in the middle. I don't think anyone is saying, treat church like YouTube and try to get the numbers up. Mention Marjorie Taylor Greene a couple of times, see if you can get the view count up.

I agree. There is an epidemic of loneliness in our country.

Are they spiritual though? Are they spiritual or did they watch a video?

I think that spirituality is tested in community. It's easy to stand up in some silo and say I'm spiritual. And I think the way to see the depth of your spirituality is to be in community with other folks who are on the spiritual journey.

Yeah.

With whom you're going to disagree, whom you're going to find irksome. And that's where spirituality is tested. It's tested in community. And that's part of what church or the synagogue or the temple provides for us. And it's a community of accountability.

Yeah. But that's sort of what's interesting to me about it too. Because, you know, people, it's a joke, right? Oh, we got to get up. We got to go to church on Sunday.

The rituals signify that not only are you part of this living community, but a community that was there before you. Right. A great cloud of witnesses who passed on that this work of truth-telling and justice-making in the world was going on before you showed up, that someone passed that baton on to you. And how that's helpful in this moment is that it encourages you to take the long view. I think that there is a way in which it's easy to become cynical in this moment, because we've seen so much hypocrisy in politics, in religious institutions.

So last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for Benjamin Netanyahu to be removed from office. He opened the door to conditioning military aid to Israel, at least opened the door to doing that in the future. On Monday, the U.S. abstained from a vote at the U.N. Security Council, which allowed for passage of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for the release of hostages.

Well, I think, with the letter that you saw, that I and several others signed on to, you see us doing just that, exploring all the ways in which we use the tools we have to get our ally to do what is necessary to honor the humanity of Palestinian children and to recognize that Palestinian children are every bit as precious as Israeli children. And so that's the work that I've been trying to do as a moral leader, that somehow we've got to center humanity in this.

You're talking about empathy and the need to show empathy. And one thing I actually talked about this with Rabbi Bras as well is that people who do not feel safe are not in a position to show as much empathy, that empathy is something that is easier to display when you are safe. It is all well and good to say, oh, we hope that these two sides show empathy to one another, but right now Israel is planning this invasion of Rafah. And afterwards, there may be time for peace, but right now we believe it is not only a moral horror, but not in Israel's long-term interest to pursue that path, that it pushes peace, it pushes a two-state solution, it pushes resolution, it pushes safety further away. How do we use our leverage right now to prevent that from happening, so that we're not talking about the importance of empathy after we have even more death, after another 10, 20, 30,000 innocent people have died?

There's no question that there's a moral urgency to all of this, which is why, when I gave the floor speech on the floor of the United States Senate calling for a ceasefire, I said in no uncertain terms that I think it's a mistake, that it would be a grave moral error for Netanyahu to escalate this conflict and to go into Rafah.

Switching gears, one thing I wanted to ask you about, there's this bill to ban TikTok, well, to force TikTok to be sold, to pass the House. It does seem as though there's these behind-closed-doors briefings about how terrifying the invasion of privacy is by this Chinese-owned company. And that's why the House passed this bill to force a sale or the app would be banned. We, as the free American people, using apps on our phone as we choose, don't have the classified briefing. Have you been in these briefings?

You know, I thought you would be kind to me. This is the most controversial thing you've asked me about all day. We got to talk about TikTok, really.

My thing about it is, if it's really dangerous, tell us.

You're a teen-fearing man. For the first time, I'm hearing from the 13-year-old constituents in Georgia.

Oh, that's true. That's interesting.

Have you been in these closed-door, classified briefings? If the American people got to see what members of Congress had seen, would they be more alarmed? Would they throw their phones away? What would happen?

I have. And what I have seen is concerning. It gives me pause.

All right. Last question. You show up to church and they're sitting in the front row, hands folded in his lap. Donald Trump. You have your sermon.

We're Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Church of Dr. King, and we're a church. So any and everybody is welcome to the church. And I think that in my case, I wouldn't have to change the sermon, because if you heard me on Sunday morning and the things that I tend to talk about, I'm sure there'll be plenty for him and others to consider.

Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock, a God-fearing, a teen-fearing man. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Great to be here with you.

All right. Thanks to Senator Warnock for joining us. And we'll have another episode for you guys on Wednesday. Take care. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.

Thank you.