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

Transcript

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Speaker 11 Welcome to Pod Save America.

Speaker 13 I'm John Favreau. I'm John Lovett.

Speaker 14 We talked to you before.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 But first, jury selection for the first ever criminal trial of a former president and current nominee will begin on April 15th.

Speaker 11 In this case, Trump is charged with falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the porn star he had an affair with.

Speaker 13 If you're a Pod Save America listener in line at

Speaker 13 Voider,

Speaker 11 stay in line.

Speaker 11 Don't wear your shirt. Don't wear your shirt.
Don't wear the shirt.

Speaker 11 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 Mershon argued that the defense has had plenty of time.

Speaker 11 So we're getting at least one Trump trial before the election. At least one.
At least one. At least one.

Speaker 11 Trump got some slightly better news from a New York appeals court on Monday, which lowered the amount of the bond he needs to post for his civil fraud verdict from $454 million to $175 million within the next 10 days.

Speaker 11 He seems to think he'll be able to come up with that amount. Here he is at a press conference after the hearing.

Speaker 15 Well, as I 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.

Speaker 15 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.
They don't want that.

Speaker 15 They don't want me taking cash out to use it for the campaign. I didn't even include like brand value.
And the brand value is, I became president because of the brand, let's say.

Speaker 15 But the brand value is, it's one of the most valuable brand values. So I think it's, I wouldn't swap it for any other brand in the world.
Trump.

Speaker 13 He's got a lot of cash, plus all that Nazi gold in Ivana's coffin.

Speaker 11 I just love at the end where you're like, Trump. Trump.
I wouldn't trade that brand for any other brand in the world. Trump.

Speaker 14 Very funny if he just walked into the courtroom and was like, an IOU, 20% of my brand. Yeah.

Speaker 13 Leverage that. Can't buy bread with brand.

Speaker 11 So huge bummer that we won't get to see Tish James seize Trump Tower. It sucks.
We don't get anything.

Speaker 13 We don't get anything.

Speaker 11 No fun.

Speaker 13 I wanted that building. Yep.
That was going to be our building. Now, Tish James, who doesn't have a political bone in her body, is going to get that building for us.

Speaker 11 Trump was fundraising off the fact that she was going going to take the building.

Speaker 11 And now today, he's fundraising off the fact that he just says there's a big fundraising email that just says, Trump Tower, still mine.

Speaker 11 That sucks.

Speaker 11 What is that fundraising for? You've already got the tower back, and you seemingly have plenty of cash. But we will get to see Trump spend most of his spring in a Manhattan courtroom.

Speaker 11 What's your take on the political implications of Monday's legal news?

Speaker 14 I mean, you heard that in the clip there. He keeps talking about putting his own money into the campaign.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 11 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 it in 2020.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I wonder if he's considering it.

Speaker 13 Here's what I took it to mean.

Speaker 13 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

Speaker 13 it's always a little bit in there yeah okay okay the other thing i thought

Speaker 13 was

Speaker 14 i you sort of referenced it i mean it's just it's got to be the most distracting way to possibly run a presidential campaign. You got to remember all these judges' names.

Speaker 14 you got to read all these documents, you got to spend months and months in court, you got to wage your little PR wars against Tish James and Goron.

Speaker 11 I mean, 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.

Speaker 11 Estimates range now from like late May into June. So he has to appear in court from 9:30 a.m.
to 4:30 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

Speaker 11 Gets Wednesday off, though, you know, you're not traveling too far if you have to get back there for Thursday.

Speaker 11 So that's a lot of the campaign. And that's just the first trial.
Now, I realize he'll like use it to raise money and he'll do his little press conference outside the courtroom. But I don't know.

Speaker 11 Does that wear well?

Speaker 14 It's not the primary, right? I mean, that's when we had the big rally around Trump effect within the Republican Party.

Speaker 14 I just, I don't know that you can assume that will happen again, at least not with swing voters.

Speaker 13 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

Speaker 13 with like people's imagin 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.

Speaker 14 Trump, like the rest of us, is just adjusting to a post-pandemic hybrid work schedule.

Speaker 13 That's true. Oh, that's right.
That's true.

Speaker 14 Three days in, a couple days out.

Speaker 14 It's going to limit his.

Speaker 11 I wonder if he's going to say that to the judge. Like, can I do some remote, remote court?

Speaker 14 Why not? Give it a whirl.

Speaker 11 It's going to be a hard case to prove. Hard case to prove.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 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, right?

Speaker 11 So, there's a lot of moving pieces here.

Speaker 11 Like, I think he should be able to prove the falsified business records fairly easily, but it's sort of taking the next leap to covering up the other crime, which clearly it was.

Speaker 11 There's some complications there. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 13 And I'm sure the open-minded Manhattan jury will approach this and

Speaker 13 try to be as fair as they possibly can to Donald Trump.

Speaker 11 It is interesting, Brad.

Speaker 13 We get nothing. We get nothing.
The one thing that's kind of cool is all the juries are coming from D.C. and Manhattan.
Like, that's like, we get one perk.

Speaker 11 Well, I know.

Speaker 14 And meanwhile, Aileen Canada down in Florida is like, how can I spike this thing as fast as humanly possible?

Speaker 11 So, Trump also said at the end of that sort of press available after courtroom today that he's going to pay cash for the bond. He's said, that's what he says.

Speaker 11 He's also a little richer on paper this week, thanks to his shitty Twitter knockoff, Truth Social.

Speaker 11 The company lost $49 million last year, but it just started trading on the NASDAQ Monday under the stock ticker DJT, with Trump's stake currently worth about $3 billion,

Speaker 11 though he's not allowed to sell his shares for six months. Is this real? Is this a Ponzi scheme? And how many shares have you guys bought?

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 And I don't see that happening.

Speaker 13 Right, right. The Ponzi scheme involves a couple.
there's a couple of rungs of the pyramid that do okay.

Speaker 11 You can't just have the top.

Speaker 13 That's just, that's just stealing from people.

Speaker 13 I just keep thinking about that scene from the Sopranos where the two henchmen are like beating the shit out of some stockbroker saying, we're pushing Wabistics.

Speaker 11 That's what I picture.

Speaker 13 Just some boiler room somewhere just being like, we're pushing Trump stocks today. It's Trump stocks.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I mean, this is like just a way to siphon cash from Trump fans, right?

Speaker 14 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. It's a meme stock.
It's a cult initiation fee.

Speaker 14 It's a securitized Trump stake. It's an oligarch.
I mean, it's all in one. It's fun.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 And then some other people who just want to do like a pump and dump kind of thing here. Yeah, right? Yeah.
Like that's, that's what this is?

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 If it collapses, like, can he start selling bits of it just to get some of the money out before the reality of the company not making any money?

Speaker 11 Well, yeah, comes face to face with this stock price. I should have said it's a six-month lockup until he can sell his shares, but the board can vote for to change that.
And the board is made up of

Speaker 11 Don Jr. and Linda McMahon and all of his

Speaker 11 goons are on the board.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 14 Truth Social is not trading on multiple on its revenues.

Speaker 14 That is absolutely true.

Speaker 11 Because the revenue was $3 million last year.

Speaker 14 Yeah, this is not Berkshire Hathaway. This is 5 billion active users on Truth Social selling scammy ads to people for like toenail fungus.

Speaker 14 What I'd like to went a little trip down memory lane, the initial pitch for Truth Media and Technology Group, which is a company that's merging with

Speaker 14 the other company, the SPAC, to form DJT, was Truth Social. And then they had a Netflix-like streaming service, a Trump streaming service.

Speaker 14 And then they had some longer-term play to create competitors to Google, Amazon, and Stripe. So I guess e-commerce.
search and payments. So close.

Speaker 14 So if you're hoping to make a return, I would not hold your breath until those businesses come to fruition.

Speaker 11 Did you guys see we also learned that the biggest institutional shareholder of the Shell company that merged with Truth Social's parent company is Jeff Yass.

Speaker 11 You might have heard that name recently because he's also a major investor in TikTok. He owns a bunch of ByteDance, the parent company for TikTok.

Speaker 11 And he also happens to be a major donor to Club for Growth. Club for Growth is paying Kellyanne Conway to lobby against the TikTok ban.
And lo and behold, Donald Trump flip-flopped on the TikTok ban.

Speaker 11 But it's all just a coincidence.

Speaker 11 Nothing is connected here.

Speaker 13 It's just,

Speaker 13 we just, it's the, it's his ability to sort of dance between the raindrops for years and years and years. Just the man doesn't get wet.
Maybe he'll finally get wet.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's 90, 91 raindrops. Yeah.

Speaker 13 Let's get this guy wet.

Speaker 11 What the fuck?

Speaker 11 Just like let's get this guy wet. Let's get this guy on the side.
I don't want to yell that, but I don't know if he's going to die.

Speaker 11 You know what I mean? Sure, yeah, no, yeah. Okay, yeah, no,

Speaker 11 sure.

Speaker 13 True social, he's got three billion dollars in his valuation.

Speaker 11 Yeah, well, he's got a bunch of idiots who are just like, sure.

Speaker 11 I mean, you said, like, buy, buy influence. I don't even know if they're buying influence.
They're just like Donald Trump's fucking Jesus Christ. No, no, I think it's both.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 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

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 13 Or did a deal with Jared.

Speaker 14 Yeah, this is a new, more efficient way, potentially.

Speaker 11 Unreal. One more fun Trump thing.
Did you guys see that he congratulated himself on Truth Social,

Speaker 11 the multi-billion dollar company, for winning two trophies at his own golf club?

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 13 If you believe Trump is a scratch golfer, I've got a stock on the Nasdaq to say.

Speaker 14 Are you guys surprised that he would take credit for winning a senior open just?

Speaker 11 I thought about that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, very.

Speaker 13 I think that, yeah.

Speaker 13 I'm also just sort of like,

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 11 Then you win and then you congratulate yourself about winning at your golf club at your own golf club.

Speaker 11 Maybe not. Yeah.

Speaker 14 Listen, you guys are making me realize this is very Kim Jong-il. He shot a 38-under par, including 11 holes and won the first time he ever played.

Speaker 14 So setting him aside, I do think Trump has won something like 20 club championships, but only at clubs he owns. Yeah, again.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 He challenged him to like a nine-hole match, and then he beat him, and then he declared himself the co-champion.

Speaker 13 Like how, like, how

Speaker 13 each side could send their best champion to fight in the middle instead of having a big battle.

Speaker 11 I mean, he's facing multiple criminal charges for cheating in an election. So, no, I can't imagine it.
There's that, there's that old joke.

Speaker 13 There's that old joke about the golfer, you know, 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And the question you face is, do you call the man a cheater or do you keep his ball in your pocket?

Speaker 14 Rick Riley from

Speaker 11 Rick Riley from Sports Illustrated

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 11 Like they know he's lying.

Speaker 14 This is nonsense, right? But they find it hilarious. Some haters despise him.
I mostly just have always found it confusing that people like this about him. Like cheating at sports is annoying.

Speaker 14 Constantly whining and being a victim is annoying. How does this not wear worse over time?

Speaker 11 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. Great tweet.
That was quite funny.

Speaker 11 He quote tweeted the truth, and he just said, congratulations, Donald. Quite the accomplishment.
That's the tone. That's the tone.
That's the humor. I love it.
More of it. I enjoyed it, too.

Speaker 14 Do it.

Speaker 13 It's great. 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?

Speaker 13 Like that that's not, it's whiny, it's an embarrassing way to behave, that like being that much of a braggard is not like cool or how a real kind of person, right, who who has, really has faith in themselves would behave.

Speaker 11 Remember

Speaker 11 he was going to award himself the Congressional Medal of Freedom when he was president?

Speaker 13 Yeah. And instead he just gave it to Rush Limbaugh.

Speaker 11 Yeah. Right.
R.I.P. 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.

Speaker 11 Axio says they're leaving with, quote, their base enraged, their majority in tatters, and their speaker facing the prospect of a humiliating ouster at the hands of his own MAGA allies.

Speaker 11 I hate to see it.

Speaker 11 This is mostly because Mike Johnson worked with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown by passing a bill with the same spending levels that cost Kevin McCarthy his job 10 months ago when he made a deal with Joe Biden about the budget.

Speaker 11 Turns out that same deal is what we just got over the weekend. This led Marjorie Taylor Greene to introduce a motion to vacate, though that doesn't appear to be going anywhere just yet.

Speaker 11 Then, Representative Mike Gallagher announced that he'll be vacating his seat next month, which will leave Republicans with a one-seat majority.

Speaker 11 Also, James Comer said they won't be impeaching Joe Biden after all. Kooks aren't too happy about any of this.
Here's Stop the Steel enthusiast Andy Biggs answering some questions on Newsmax.

Speaker 18 Let's just, I mean, if you want to talk performance of Speaker Johnson, I'm as dismayed and

Speaker 18 disappointed as anybody.

Speaker 19 In the House, Congressman, you think things are good for the Republican Party?

Speaker 18 I think that we get along better than most people would think.

Speaker 18 I think that, look,

Speaker 18 I try to.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 You got a one-vote majority. What's going on in the House?

Speaker 18 Well, I don't know why Kevin left,

Speaker 18 and I'm not sure I know why Ken or Mike, or Mike left, or Mike's leaving, and Ken left.

Speaker 14 Well, when you put it that way.

Speaker 11 Mike Johnson, welcome to the resistance.

Speaker 13 If what you had read, just sort of walking through what Johnson is facing, you could have just, until you referenced McCarthy, you could have just replaced the word Johnson with McCarthy.

Speaker 13 And it is the

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 14 10 years.

Speaker 11 No one is happy with Republicans controlling the House, not even House Republicans. It's just like they can't keep a speaker.
They can't agree on anything as a caucus, let alone a House. Like,

Speaker 11 we it's like people want another two years of this they just keep replacing speaker after speaker with more extreme versions who still aren't extreme enough for like the lunatic fringe of their party investigations based on nothing that don't go anywhere it's uh it's you know impeachment's going great impeachment impeachment's done well done guys it's going to be the least productive congress in history by a lot.

Speaker 11 Basically, all they've done is barely kept the government open, renamed a few post offices.

Speaker 11 They got all these younger members retiring and not just retiring, but then like leaving early.

Speaker 11 They don't even wait till the end of their term.

Speaker 13 I think because

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 Gallagher is the last person who can leave without causing them to go to what, an even split fucking cluster. Fuck, you know, there's seven other people that are like, ah, fuck.

Speaker 11 Yeah, they all want to be lobbyists.

Speaker 13 Yeah, they want to make the money. Ken Buck's out.

Speaker 11 He already left, and he signed on to the Democrats-Ukraine discharge petition right before he walked out the door. So these people aren't just leaving.

Speaker 11 They're like leaving with like a couple fuck you's to leadership.

Speaker 11 Like they didn't even get, neither of them, Gallagher or Buck, neither of them gave Johnson a heads up that they were leaving. Or a gift.

Speaker 13 Or a notes. gift or nothing.

Speaker 11 Even, by the way, George Santos announced he's leaving the Republican Party. He's running as an independent party.

Speaker 13 I would say their party left him, John.

Speaker 11 So MTG, she basically said this is like a warning shot.

Speaker 11 It's like a resolution to introduce the motion to vacate, but she hasn't triggered it yet. I don't know.
Who cares? But anyway, the question is, some Democrats have said, well,

Speaker 11 if she files this, we might keep Mike Johnson. We might vote to keep him.
Do you guys see any good reasons for House Democrats to save Mike Johnson from being McCarthy'?

Speaker 14 The argument for it is that America is our accountability partner. Nice.

Speaker 14 And that we need a speaker and a Congress in place to do serious things because we're serious, responsible people and we run the government and

Speaker 11 mass borrows and that too.

Speaker 14 That's the argument for it.

Speaker 11 I don't know that I believe that.

Speaker 13 If you go back and look at what this conversation, which we've had before around McCarthy, looked like, Democrats were eager for McCarthy to keep his job to get funding for Ukraine, award more federal projects in Democratic districts.

Speaker 13 And some went so far as to demand that right-wing Republicans be removed from the rules committee.

Speaker 13 Some wanted a promise that GOP campaign committees will not spend money to defeat politically vulnerable Democrats.

Speaker 11 I think that's probably a stretch. That's a lot.

Speaker 13 Up to including...

Speaker 11 You start from a

Speaker 11 negotiating position.

Speaker 13 Demanding co-chairs for committees. We're now at the point where people just want the Ukraine aid.
And fine, fair enough. But what's what's I feel like what's sort of twisted about all this is

Speaker 13 because the media treats Democrats as protagonists and Republicans antagonists and Republicans are just feral creatures wandering the earth and Democrats are human beings with agency, it's incumbent upon us to figure out how to help them out of this jam.

Speaker 13 How about Mike Johnson throw together a couple options? What does Mike Johnson want for these Democratic votes?

Speaker 13 Never get a proposal from the Republicans for this. And I have another idea.
I agree that we should have a functioning House of of Representatives.

Speaker 13 If a few Republicans want to join and make Hakeem Jeffries the Speaker of the House, there's lots of interesting ways that they can be accommodated and made to feel welcome in the big, beautiful Democratic coalition that would surely be happy to have them.

Speaker 13 That's another option.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 I think it's just you want the only thing they have left to do before the election, because of course you can't be legislating nothing else. That's what's going to happen.

Speaker 11 They all have senioritis because it's an election year. So they need to get Ukraine done.
Yep. And the funding bill that they just passed goes to September 30th.

Speaker 11 So you don't want another shutdown in October right before the election. I would just say to Mike Johnson, like, put the Ukraine bill on the floor and let's agree on spending levels for December.

Speaker 11 Yeah, through December, whatever. And fine, take the job.

Speaker 11 The House isn't doing anything anyway. Take the job.
I guess.

Speaker 13 But like, so we're just a little torp. Yeah.

Speaker 13 What else are we getting?

Speaker 11 Well, here's the alternative. Something.
Well, the alternative is.

Speaker 13 That's what we're getting. By the way, we're getting a version of that now.

Speaker 11 The alternative is we lose Mike Johnson, then we get, you know, Andy Biggs or someone even crazier. Ukraine doesn't get done.
There's no Ukraine funding, and then we get another shutdown.

Speaker 14 But maybe you also get another three weeks of disastrous inviting and votes and embarrassment and humiliation. Right, there are Republicans and there's some political benefit.

Speaker 14 I don't know what that is.

Speaker 11 You get content for us and find the artists.

Speaker 13 But I will say, like, what we would be... Look,

Speaker 13 I think 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And for the long-term health of the country, we want to win the House. So I think it's a little bit, it's a little tough to just be like, yeah, well, that's the best we could get.

Speaker 11 They're sitting at 11% approval ratings. So I feel like that, I feel like the country's got the message.

Speaker 11 it's like but you think right but yeah maybe this is what maybe yeah no i just look i think that i 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 fund ukraine but it is in our national security interest to fund ukraine then

Speaker 11 a couple days of republicans looking like fucking clowns is not as worthwhile as getting this done and actually funding you guys

Speaker 13 get the ukraine funding and then to fucking fuck them

Speaker 13 just like let's the Ukraine funding, then we do our own motion to vacate.

Speaker 11 I think let's trick these bastards.

Speaker 14 I'm sure there's a lot of very serious people in Congress, mostly in our party, who care deeply about this issue.

Speaker 14 I do, there is an open question, though, if Johnson is saved with a bunch of Democratic votes, how does Trump react to that? He might have a meltdown, be like, oh, little Mikey, he's weak.

Speaker 14 He can't do this without the Democrats. Well, you can see this going badly in a couple of different ways.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it'll be, it's, it's,

Speaker 11 Trump has different ways of sort of breaking off relationships. There's the like, I'm going I'm going to blast you on Truth Social, right? I'm going to bury you at my golf course.

Speaker 11 I'm going to bury you at my golf course.

Speaker 11 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 met that, it was like a quick five-month family.

Speaker 14 Dennis the man who ever knew the stage of the speech.

Speaker 11 He was sort of weird. What was with that Covenant Eyes thing? That was weird.
That's what you'll be hearing Trump say. I like that.

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Democrats are gaining in the polls.

Speaker 12 We're winning special election after special election, and we are far from through. But I need your help to keep the work going and flip the Senate seats to finally put a check on Trump.

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Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 This allegedly pissed off Bibi Netanyahu, who then canceled a planned visit by his senior advisors to the White House.

Speaker 11 Though 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.

Speaker 11 Tommy, what did you make of all this, and has there been any movement in Washington on the effort to condition U.S. military aid to Israel or even the other diplomatic efforts that the U.S.

Speaker 11 and Israel have been engaging with Hamas?

Speaker 14 So this resolution basically just reflects the long-standing Biden policy that they've been working towards for a while, which gets a ceasefire and a release to the hostages. It calls for both.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 So, I mean, I think some others, it's interesting that the administration says it's not legally binding.

Speaker 14 I think others would argue it is, but in practice, there's no enforcement mechanism without another vote by the Security Council for like to sanction Israel, for example, and the U.S. could veto that.

Speaker 14 All that said, it's a pretty big break from the norm where the U.S. has vetoed a lot of U.N.

Speaker 14 resolutions over the years that criticize Israel, including several similar resolutions about Gaza that called for a ceasefire without demanding the release of hostages or condemning Hamas.

Speaker 14 More broadly, though, like this is another step in what seems like a pretty big divide between the U.S. and Israel.

Speaker 14 I think that Netanyahu seems to want this fight, and I think he's probably setting up an effort to just start running against Biden, but we'll see.

Speaker 14 The question of suspending aid is happening on a different track. In February, the Biden team put out this memorandum saying that any country that gets U.S.

Speaker 14 weapons has to use them in accordance with U.S. and international law.

Speaker 14 So the countries that receive these weapons, I think there's six of them, including Israel, submitted assurances in some written form last week.

Speaker 14 They're now being reviewed, and we will hear at some point what that review says, and it could result in the Biden administration deciding to withhold additional ARPS transfers.

Speaker 14 So there are 17 Democrats in the U.S. Senate who are saying these assurances are bogus.
Do not give them more weapons, including like Durbin and Van Holland, like some centrist Dems.

Speaker 14 Human rights groups are saying these assurances are not true. They are violating international law.
The Israeli military is in Gaza. And so we shall see.

Speaker 11 Trevor Burrus: And this is just a determination the Biden administration can make itself. and Congress doesn't necessarily have a role here.

Speaker 14 Aaron Powell, yeah, I think there's a determination that will be made by the State Department and the Defense Department in something like 45 days from receiving these assurances, and then I think Biden makes a call.

Speaker 11 Aaron Powell, because I noticed that

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 14 Yeah, 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 3.8 billion in military support for israel uh but it banned funding for the unrelief and works agency or unra which is the biggest employer in gaza they employ about 13 000 people in gaza and provide relief so some pretty big steps were taken in that bill finally Fun times at NBC News right now.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 14 That's awkward.

Speaker 11 Here's a clip of that interview and then what Chuck said to Welker afterwards.

Speaker 23 Do you disagree with Trump saying he's going to free those who've been charged with the trend?

Speaker 16 I do not think people who committed violent acts acts on January 6th should be freed.

Speaker 23 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?

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 24 Look, let me deal with the elephant in the room.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract.

Speaker 24 She wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for it.

Speaker 24 And look, there's a reason why there's a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting.

Speaker 24 When NBC made the decision to give her

Speaker 24 NBC News's credibility, you got to ask yourself, what does she bring NBC News? And when we make deals like this, and I've been at this company a long time, you're doing it for access.

Speaker 11 Good for Chuck.

Speaker 13 Way to go, Chuck.

Speaker 14 Kristen Welker did a great job in the interview, too. I know.
It was a 20-minute grilling.

Speaker 11 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.
She did a really good job.

Speaker 11 What did you guys think of the uproar? And what do you think compelled NBC to hire her in the first place?

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 I think it was, it's at one point in that interview with Welker where she says

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 13 It's interesting how much this has sort of shifted over the last six, eight years, which is, I actually think reflects something good, which is I think a lot of journalists, especially at like big mainstream outlets that were sort of kind of much more comfortable in being in the role of kind of referee and sort of viewing it as a match between two sides that they were sort of in the middle of, I think, have kind of learned that their role changes when the losing team tries to burn the stadium to the ground.

Speaker 13 And I also think that that has been helped by the fact that they have been

Speaker 13 kind of dealt with personal attacks for years. They have seen the dark side of this.

Speaker 13 They have seen the anti-democratic, authoritarian viciousness come for them personally, affect them personally, affect their colleagues, affect the way they cover the news.

Speaker 13 And it seems as though that attitude, that understanding that, yes, a lot of the times we are between two sides, but then there are times where we as journalists are on the side of democracy versus the people on the outside of it, I think has been internalized by people who are covering the news much more than the people who are maybe

Speaker 11 further away from it. Yeah.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 I'm sure the Nikki Haley team probably does not like Rana very much. I don't know that she's dialed into the Hill.
So per Chuck's point, you pay contributors to get access.

Speaker 14 I'm not sure what access she gets you. There's obviously also the far more serious credibility problem.
And I think for people like Chuck, it wasn't just that they were lying to him.

Speaker 14 They were brutally attacking him week after week after week in the most personal terms.

Speaker 14 And so I guess the reason you pay her as a contributor is to keep, to have a consistent pro-Trump voice on through the election and to keep her from going to competitors.

Speaker 14 But like, who's spun up to watch the Rana exclusive?

Speaker 11 At least after this one. It does illustrate the larger problem with having, oh, we just need a pro-Trump voice because pro-Trump voices, again, they tell you that the election was stolen.

Speaker 11 And you just have to draw a line somewhere.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 And I do think like political diversity on a network news is important and have people hash it out, argue it out, stuff like that. But you just have to draw a line somewhere.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 And if that's a, 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.

Speaker 11 Well,

Speaker 11 it's really a hard thing to do.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I also, it does sound like just from some of the kind of coverage that Rana Romney McDaniel got sorted Romney kind of interpersonally, right? Like that she's, oh, she's from that tradition.

Speaker 13 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 once she's on our air, she'll be a much more reasonable person.

Speaker 13 But people don't, there's no,

Speaker 13 there's no, it's a golf day. There's no mulligan on calling for the overthrow of the government.

Speaker 14 Four more years? No, No, I take that back. Yeah, no, to your point, NBC reportedly got close with her because they were negotiating to host a debate with the RNC.
So that's how she greased this deal.

Speaker 14 But you are insulting your audience by putting a known liar on TV all the time and paying that person. And also, I think like this is what everyone hates about Washington.

Speaker 14 It's this chummy nonsense is that everyone knows that everyone's doing a K-fabe and it's a bit and we know she's a liar, but now she's mopping up afterwards and that's somehow okay.

Speaker 11 And again, like, you know, Alyssa Farrah Griffin, she was in Trump World. She She was in the Trump White House till the very end.

Speaker 11 And when she left and she became a contributor, you know, I think I probably criticized it myself, right? Like we did. But she also sort of did a mea culpa, right? Like, this was wrong.

Speaker 11 And I've seen the, you know, like, there was none of that from Rana.

Speaker 11 By the way, NBC. Rana was just like, no, no, no, no, no.
I was taking one for the team and I was sort of lying when I was there and now I'm here and you kind of got to take one for the team.

Speaker 13 I mean, it's just, it was

Speaker 13 making a coup.

Speaker 13 There There was a report, I think it was a Maggie Haberman story in the Times about

Speaker 13 Trump trying to get the primaries to be over early to kind of push Nikki Haley aside.

Speaker 13 And it was midway through the story, it mentions almost in passing that Trump called Ronna McDaniel and said, hey, can we not only cancel the debates, but can we cancel the elections altogether?

Speaker 11 And she put out a statement.

Speaker 13 And so the idea that like, oh, you know, you know, she was just being a team player, she was complicit in this for years.

Speaker 11 By the way, that doesn't mean like have her on meet the press. Kristen Welker's interview with her was fantastic.

Speaker 11 Just if she's a paid contributor, that 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.

Speaker 14 There's also just a lot of former Trump officials at this point that you could go to that are more compelling and

Speaker 14 more credibility and are better dialed into this world.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that is also true.

Speaker 11 It's a real head scratcher.

Speaker 14 It's a real just.

Speaker 11 I don't think she'll be on Maddow tonight. What do you guys think?

Speaker 13 And the SMDC

Speaker 14 is going to burn her at the stake. It's going to be a live town hall.

Speaker 13 Like Nicole Walls

Speaker 13 is nailing her demands to the door of 30 Rock.

Speaker 14 Yeah, they're going to drown her like a witch.

Speaker 11 Does Rana float?

Speaker 11 I guess we'll just leave it there, huh? Yeah, it's a great place to end.

Speaker 11 Let's go to the interview with

Speaker 11 that sir. We're going to do a couple housekeeping items before we're going to give that to Senator Warnock to make sure we hook her right to him.

Speaker 11 We had a new episode of Inside 2024 out on Thursday.

Speaker 11 Cal Penn joins Dan and Alyssa to talk about their time in the White House together, and they're going to get into just how accurate political shows like Veep and the West Wing really are.

Speaker 11 To get access to this Friends of the Pod subscription series and others, head to crooked.com slash friendsnow.

Speaker 11 Also, this week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that will decide the right to access the abortion pill.

Speaker 11 If you want to help support nationwide abortion freedom, you can pick up any item from Crooked's no-trespassing collection, and a portion of the proceeds will go to Vote Save America's Fuck Bands, the Fight Back Fund, which currently supports abortion rights organizations across Arizona, Nevada, and Florida.

Speaker 11 When we come back, Lovett talks to Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock.

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Speaker 12 Hi, this is Kirsten Gillibrand, your DSCC chair. Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda are tearing this country apart.
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Speaker 13 Joining us in the 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.

Speaker 17 Five times, but who's counting?

Speaker 13 United States Senator and pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock. Welcome back to the pod.

Speaker 17 Great to be back.

Speaker 13 It's good to see you. Last time I saw you, I was in Atlanta.
Now you're in L.A. That's right.

Speaker 11 Our turf.

Speaker 17 I was on your turf the last time. I was on your show.

Speaker 11 I guess that's true.

Speaker 13 How does it feel to finally not be running

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 11 Something like that. You do, actually.
You do wake up in the night thinking you've forgotten you're up for reelection.

Speaker 17 Look, I ran

Speaker 17 three years straight. My name was on the ballot five times, if you count.
The jungle primary, which nobody remembers, that when I entered

Speaker 11 my first race, I had 20 opponents.

Speaker 13 20 opponents.

Speaker 17 I think that's easy to forget now, Democrats and Republicans. And here we are.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 13 Well, so one problem of you not being on the ballot is we don't have your coattails.

Speaker 13 All right, Senator, President Biden carried Georgia by under 12,000 votes, became the first Democrat to win the state in three decades. The latest polls have Trump up a couple points.

Speaker 13 What has the change for Biden to win Georgia in 2024?

Speaker 17 Well, listen, in this business, you pay attention to the polls, but I think it's a strategic era to be obsessed with the polls.

Speaker 11 I call it the polar coaster. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 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 at the end of the day, it's going to be close.

Speaker 17 And since it's going to be close, we've got to turn our people out. We've got to help people to understand what's at stake.
And I do think that as we get closer to the election

Speaker 17 and people recognize that at the end of the day, this is a binary choice, nothing else, binary choice.

Speaker 17 And the contrast could not be more stark.

Speaker 17 The consequences and the stakes, in my view, could not be higher. And I think that as we make that case, both about what the president has done, and it's impressive,

Speaker 17 and about the scary alternative, I believe the people of Georgia are going to do for Joe Biden what they did for me and send him back to the White House.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 How do we get the word out about some of the achievements that make Joe Biden worthy of a second term?

Speaker 17 Well, you know,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 You know, and I think about this as a senator. I think about this as we consider our base.

Speaker 17 Black unemployment is at a record low.

Speaker 17 We've seen a 60%

Speaker 17 increase in black wealth since before the pandemic. We've seen a

Speaker 17 30-year high in the opening up of black businesses. We've invested some $7 billion

Speaker 17 in historically black colleges and universities.

Speaker 17 As they say, you know, in some of the neighborhoods that move around in Atlanta, Joe Biden's got receipts. And I think the job is ours to continue to make that case.

Speaker 17 One of the things that I've been doing is that as I go and talk to rooms all across our state,

Speaker 17 lately I've been asking people if you or somebody you know

Speaker 17 has had their student debt canceled or relieved. And believe it or not, in all the rooms I've been going to, hands go up.

Speaker 17 And in some places, as much as 60, 70% of the room.

Speaker 17 And we've done 144 billion dollars of student debt cancellation and counting that's impacted some 4 million Americans. What does that do? It closes the racial wealth gap.

Speaker 17 It gives people a chance to own their own home because they don't have a mortgage before they have a mortgage.

Speaker 17 It increases the likelihood that young entrepreneurial people

Speaker 17 will start small businesses. This is how government shows up in the lives of ordinary people.
And I think that at the end of the day, the question is: who's working for me?

Speaker 17 Who's thinking about ordinary, hardworking people? And again, Joe Biden has receipts and will continue to make the case.

Speaker 13 After the State of the Union, you compare Joe Biden to the boxer Joe Lewis. Is that because he was feisty or because you also hope he beats the ever-loving shit out of a Nazi?

Speaker 11 Listen,

Speaker 17 he came out fighting. As I said that night, he came out fighting and he never let up.
And I think he'll continue to do that through November.

Speaker 17 You know, I chastise you for your language, except that when the Affordable Care Act passed,

Speaker 17 Joe Biden famously said that it was a big deal.

Speaker 13 A big deal of some kind.

Speaker 17 I won't say it the way he said it.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 We don't have to get into the history.

Speaker 13 I said I wouldn't get it. All right.
You brought up Joe Lewis.

Speaker 11 I didn't bring it up.

Speaker 17 I think I said that night what my point was. Okay.
The man came out fighting. He never let up.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 What do you think the role of the faith community can be? What should it be in this election?

Speaker 11 Oh, it's huge.

Speaker 17 And I think that's the case for all of our elections.

Speaker 17 I have often said that I believe that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. I really believe that, that

Speaker 17 it is born of this notion that we were created in what theologians call the Imago Day or the image of God.

Speaker 17 And if you're not given to that kind of religious language, this idea that we all have value, that all have worth as human beings. And if I have value, then I ought to have a voice.

Speaker 17 And democracy enables that by giving me a vote. And so I think the faith community has an important role to play.

Speaker 17 And in all times, but especially in a moment like this,

Speaker 17 it's really the soul of our country, the soul of the nation that is at stake.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 we are once again at a critical inflection point, a place where two ways meet.

Speaker 17 We're somewhere between the hopes of January 5th and the peril of January 6th.

Speaker 17 We're somewhere between a nation that can send an African-American man who grew up in public housing, the first and his family to graduate from college to the United States Senate alongside a young Jewish man, the son of an immigrant, both inspired by John Lewis, or

Speaker 17 that nation nation that says this is only for some of us. And if this diverse American electorate decides who the president is, we're not going to let that happen.

Speaker 17 We'll shut it down even to the point of violence.

Speaker 17 And so I choose the America of January 5th. I'm aware of the reality of January 6th.
And I think we can't be in denial about that. And there's a sense in which we are both of those days.

Speaker 11 We're both of them.

Speaker 17 We can't say that January 6th is not who we are. There's a sense in which that's who we've always been, but we've also been January 5th.

Speaker 17 We're the latest generation of Americans who get to choose which direction we're going to go in. And I hope that the young people who are listening to this podcast and others

Speaker 11 will lean in.

Speaker 13 So you talked about

Speaker 13 people valuing themselves, whether it's through faith or just simply finding a sense of purpose, sense of meaning. Church attendance is declining.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Do you see that in your own church? Do you see declining membership, especially among young people? And how do you explain it if you can't explain it?

Speaker 17 My church is actually growing and not declining. And it's generationally diverse.

Speaker 17 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. And I have said to my church for years that

Speaker 17 if we can't figure out a way to defy that in the church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, I don't know where else we can do it.
So we've been very intentional about that.

Speaker 17 This might come as a little bit of a surprise to you, but I don't know.

Speaker 17 I'm not as

Speaker 17 concerned about

Speaker 17 church attendance, even though I think it's important.

Speaker 17 I think that something happens when you're part of a faith community. But I think if church leaders become obsessed with

Speaker 17 putting people in the seats, that's the wrong way to think about it.

Speaker 17 And in my view, it's actually the opposite of the gospel.

Speaker 17 Jesus said that if you seek to save yourself,

Speaker 17 you'll lose yourself.

Speaker 17 But if you give yourself over for my sake, if you give yourself over to something larger than you,

Speaker 17 you'll save yourself in the process. And so I think that there's a way in which this focus on institutionalism

Speaker 17 is a good way to kill an institution. The church has to give itself over to what Jesus and all of the great faith traditions fought for, justice, mercy, compassion.

Speaker 17 Otherwise, you find yourself aligned with the powers in such a way that you actually lose your prophetic voice.

Speaker 17 And so I have spent my time at Ebenezer long before I ran for the Senate fighting for health care because I believed in it. I wasn't running for anything.

Speaker 17 I was running to get people health care, fighting for criminal justice reform because I think it is a deep moral contradiction that the United States of America is 5% of the world's population.

Speaker 17 We warehouse nearly 25% of the prison population in the world. The land of the free is the incarceration capital of the world.

Speaker 17 I think that the church has to give itself over to fighting for creation, fighting for the planet. And I think to the degree that we do that,

Speaker 17 and

Speaker 17 young people see a genuine commitment to that,

Speaker 17 they may not join the church, but they'll join the movement. And I think that's what we had long before we had a church anyway.
It was actually a movement that became a church. And

Speaker 17 I invite folks every week on Sunday when I preach and through the work that I do to

Speaker 17 join the movement.

Speaker 13 Yeah. Well,

Speaker 13 I talked about this with a rabbi actually this weekend, Rabbi Sharon Brouse. And she talks about

Speaker 13 the fact that

Speaker 13 one explanation she has is that

Speaker 13 there are a lot of people who feel like there's like churches and synagogues and temples that do a lot of ritual that doesn't, that feels disconnected.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 I don't think anyone is saying, you know, treat church like YouTube and try to get the numbers up. You know, mention Marjorie Taylor Greene a couple of times, see if you can get the view count up.

Speaker 13 But we do lose something when we lose these places where people gather once a week and participate together. And there is a cost to that.
And we see that all over. I agree.

Speaker 17 There is a,

Speaker 17 you know, there's an epidemic of loneliness in our country.

Speaker 17 And connected to that, people are feeling less happy and more depressed.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 I think human connection is healing.

Speaker 17 There is something that happens. And so

Speaker 17 what I do say to young folks in my church on Sunday morning and in other places, and not just, you know, all kinds of people, is, you know,

Speaker 17 I often hear folks say I'm I'm I'm not I'm not religious I'm spiritual and I understand what they're getting at right

Speaker 17 and are they spiritual though are they spiritual or did they watch a did they watch a video well see that's I mean I think that spirituality is tested in community

Speaker 17 it's easy to stand up you know 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.

Speaker 17 Because

Speaker 17 if you really want to see how deep your spirituality is, you need to be with folks who are there and that are going to get on your nerves,

Speaker 17 with whom you're going to disagree, whom you're going to find irksome. And that's where spirituality is tested, is tested in community.

Speaker 17 And that's part of what church or the synagogue or the temple provides for us. And it's a community of accountability.

Speaker 13 Yeah,

Speaker 13 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, or I don't want to go to temple today.

Speaker 13 It's boring. I don't want to go to this service.
But there's something that happens when you do these rituals, even when you don't want to do them.

Speaker 13 And part of it is just that

Speaker 13 we are in a society now where

Speaker 13 we are constantly stimulated in ways that don't require us to do the work that would normally have had to be done.

Speaker 17 The rituals signify that not only are you part of this living community, but a community that was there before you, a great cloud of witnesses

Speaker 17 who've passed on, that this work of truth-telling and justice-making in the world was going on before you showed up,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I think that there is a way in which it's easy to become cynical in this moment because

Speaker 17 we've seen so much hypocrisy in politics, in religious institutions. I think the problems are so enormous that you can easily become hardened and cynical, give in to despair.

Speaker 17 But participating in these traditions, at least for me, is the recognition that that

Speaker 17 long before I was fighting for health care and Medicaid expansion in Georgia, long before I was fighting for voting rights, which for me is at root about humanity, long before I was fighting for an inclusive community, a beloved community that embraces folks red, yellow, brown, black, and white, members of the LGBTQ community, that's intentional about making sure that we celebrate the gifts and diversity that people who are differently able bring to the table, that there were folks who were having conversations about this and fighting for it long before me.

Speaker 17 And that helps me to take the long view so that when we have these moments when there are these contractions like what we saw between 2016 and 2020, these contractions, these steps backwards, I take the long view that says even if we lose or have a setback in this moment, as Dr.

Speaker 17 Kane used to say, the arc. the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
It is what gives me hope to keep bending that arc.

Speaker 13 So last week,

Speaker 13 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for Benjamin Netanyahu to be removed from office. He opened the door

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Security Council, which allowed for passage of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for the release of hostages. You said Israel has a right to defend itself.

Speaker 13 You've called for a negotiated ceasefire and spoken out against the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Half of Gaza is on the brink of starvation.

Speaker 13 Aid cannot reach people, including children who need it. Israel is threatening to invade Rafah, where over a million Palestinians have taken refuge.
You've called that morally unjustifiable.

Speaker 13 You signed on to an amendment to require that any country receiving weapons to use them in accordance with U.S. and international law.

Speaker 13 What will it take for Congress to use what leverage it has by conditioning aid to Israel?

Speaker 13 And I know the politics are complex, but how does it make sense morally that we make demands with our statements, that we beseech with our words, but we don't make demands with the resources we provide?

Speaker 17 Well, I think with the letter that you saw that I and several others signed on to,

Speaker 17 you see us doing just that:

Speaker 17 exploring all the ways in which

Speaker 17 we use the tools we have

Speaker 17 to get our ally

Speaker 17 to do what is necessary

Speaker 11 to honor

Speaker 17 the humanity of Palestinian children and to recognize that Palestinian children are every bit as precious as Israeli children.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 You got me on this faith part of the conversation, which always informs the work that I do.

Speaker 17 But since we're on this path, there's the scripture where Isaiah says that the

Speaker 17 lion shall lie down next to the lamb and a little child shall lead them.

Speaker 17 I must say to you that that's always felt and sounded a little idyllic to me. What does that mean? And

Speaker 17 as I've been looking at the situation in Gaza,

Speaker 17 I've thought about the fact that adversaries and people who are on different sides of a conflict, here's the thing they have in common. They all love their children.

Speaker 17 And if somehow we can look into other,

Speaker 17 into the eyes of other people's children and see our own, if we actually believed

Speaker 17 that

Speaker 17 the ability of other people's children to thrive

Speaker 17 is inextricably connected to the future of our own, what set of choices would we make?

Speaker 17 I think that's what the prophet meant when he said that a little child shall lead them. And so we've seen just devastation that is unspeakable.
First, not first, but in recent months with October 7th,

Speaker 17 we can't turn our eyes away from what happened

Speaker 17 and the death that happened. The sheer human cruelty.
Sexual violence.

Speaker 17 used as a weapon of war, elderly people, little babies and children taking

Speaker 17 the kind of gratuitous violence and brutality of it all. We can't turn away from that, but we also cannot turn away from the devastation that we've seen in the wake of that.

Speaker 17 There's an acronym they use in Gaza that basically says wounded child

Speaker 17 with no surviving family.

Speaker 17 I can't think of a worse place to be in the world, a worse hand to be dealt coming into the world than to be a wounded child

Speaker 17 with no surviving family.

Speaker 17 And so

Speaker 17 I'm doing

Speaker 17 the things that I can,

Speaker 17 and I'm actively looking for ways in which we can continue to use all the tools that we have

Speaker 17 to get us on a path that leads to peace. Here's what I know.
Increasing death

Speaker 17 and devastation will not end death and devastation.

Speaker 17 And so we've got to get on another road.

Speaker 17 And I hope that somehow

Speaker 17 people on both sides of that conflict, that all of us can tap into the best of our faith and moral traditions

Speaker 17 as we

Speaker 17 think about the meaning of Ramadan and Passover,

Speaker 17 Easter on the horizon for those of us who are Christian, that we can tap into these traditions, center the children, and find our way to a two-state solution that honors the humanity of Palestinian children and Israeli children.

Speaker 13 You're talking about empathy and

Speaker 13 the need to show empathy. And one thing I actually talked about this with Rabbi Bross as well is that people who do not feel safe

Speaker 13 are not in a position to show as much empathy. That empathy is something that is easier to display when you are safe.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And afterwards, there may be time for peace.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people, innocent people have died?

Speaker 17 There's no question that there's a moral urgency to all of this, which is why

Speaker 17 when I gave the floor speech on the floor of the United States Senate calling for a ceasefire,

Speaker 17 I said in no uncertain terms that I think it's a mistake,

Speaker 17 that it would be a grave moral error for Netanyahu to escalate this conflict and to go into Rafah.

Speaker 17 Palestinian people, in a sense, did what they were told to do.

Speaker 17 And you've got 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah.

Speaker 17 Now, to bomb the very area where they were told to go

Speaker 17 is unimaginable to me.

Speaker 17 And the relief agencies that are on the ground are saying this. These are folks who don't have a political bone in this fight.

Speaker 17 They're predicting that this could mean that we'd lose some 85,000 Palestinians on top of the 30,000 that have already been killed.

Speaker 17 We're talking not only about empathy, but enlightened self-interest. It would be devastating for the people

Speaker 17 of Gaza.

Speaker 17 And yes, it would push us further away

Speaker 17 from peace.

Speaker 17 I know there are those who say, well, what are we going to do about Hamas,

Speaker 17 which is a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel? I take that seriously.

Speaker 17 But

Speaker 17 if the legacy of the attack on October 7th becomes

Speaker 17 continuing escalating violence in turn,

Speaker 17 then Hamas will have already won. Hamas is not just an organization.
In fact, I think the ideology is much more dangerous,

Speaker 17 much more lethal, especially now than the organization.

Speaker 17 It is an ideology that lies in a place deeper than any of the tunnels beneath Gaza.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 somehow we've got to disrupt

Speaker 17 that mindset.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 I still remain hopeful

Speaker 17 that we will use all the diplomatic tools that we have, that we will use the pressure that we have.

Speaker 17 Israel is a sovereign state. We respect its sovereignty.

Speaker 17 But as you point out,

Speaker 17 as we

Speaker 17 provide the resources

Speaker 17 for Israel,

Speaker 17 we have a right and I think a moral obligation to ensure that what happens

Speaker 17 with

Speaker 17 the resources, with the

Speaker 17 weapons

Speaker 17 is consistent with American values.

Speaker 17 and that

Speaker 17 we have an ability to speak with moral authority and credibility in the world. That's important

Speaker 17 for the long-term

Speaker 17 national security of our country and for the prospects of peace, not only in this conflict, but in conflicts in the future.

Speaker 13 Switching gears,

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And that's why the House passed this bill to force a sale or the app would be banned. We, as the American, the free American people using apps on our phone as we choose,

Speaker 13 don't have the classified briefing. Have you been in these briefings? Where are you on

Speaker 13 TikTok? Do you want ByteDance to sell it? Do you want to support something that forces them to sell it?

Speaker 17 You know, I thought

Speaker 17 you would be kind to me. This is the most controversial thing you've asked me about all day.

Speaker 17 We got to talk about TikTok, really.

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 11 my thing about it is that just if it's really dangerous, tell us. Listen,

Speaker 11 so

Speaker 13 you don't want to get flamed on TikTok.

Speaker 11 You don't want to get

Speaker 11 ripped to pieces.

Speaker 11 You're a man of God and you're afraid of these teens.

Speaker 11 You're a teenager.

Speaker 11 For the first time, I am hearing from the 13-year-old constituents in Georgia. All right.

Speaker 11 Well, they can't vote.

Speaker 17 And they're reminding me that the next time I'm I'm up, they will be voting.

Speaker 11 Oh, that's true. Oh, that's interesting.
That's interesting. That's interesting.
Well,

Speaker 13 but

Speaker 13 just here,

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 Would they throw their phones away? What would happen?

Speaker 11 I have.

Speaker 17 And what I have seen is concerning. It gives me pause.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 there's a way in which we have been

Speaker 17 getting this information now over the last few years.

Speaker 17 And so I do think it's important for Congress to act,

Speaker 17 but I also think it's important for us to act in a thoughtful way.

Speaker 17 And so

Speaker 17 this is not a politician's answer, my 13-year-old constituents and my seven-year-old daughter at home notwithstanding. I do think that we need to act in a thoughtful way.

Speaker 17 So, you know, I'm looking at the various proposals.

Speaker 17 There's more than one way to think about how to respond to this.

Speaker 17 But there's a way in which, as you point out, it's that classic balance between

Speaker 17 national security on the other hand and the values that we have around freedom and expression and all of that on the other hand.

Speaker 17 And both of those things have to be protected.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 17 we'll see where we land.

Speaker 13 All All right, last question. You show up to church, and there sitting in the front row, hands folded in his lap, Donald Trump.

Speaker 13 You have your sermon. Are you just giving your sermon as prepared? Are you throwing it out? Are you talking to him directly? What do you think he would say? You don't know why he's there.

Speaker 13 You don't know if he's had some big change of heart.

Speaker 17 We're Ebenezer Baptist Church and the church of Dr. King, and we're a church.

Speaker 17 So any and everybody's welcome

Speaker 17 to the church. And

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 13 Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock, a God-fearing, a teen-fearing man.

Speaker 13 Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 14 Great to be here with you.

Speaker 11 All right. Thanks to Senator Warnock for joining us, and we'll have another episode for you guys on Wednesday.

Speaker 22 Take care.

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Speaker 11 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.
Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Speaker 11 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Wakeem is our senior producer.
Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 11 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 11 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kellman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviv, and Molly Lobel.

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