Transcript: Trump Seethes as Bishop Calls Him Out in Heartfelt Plea

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 22 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump was at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday morning, where he was treated to a sermon by the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde. In an extraordinary moment, she urged Trump to show mercy on a number of the likely victims of his coming policies, from LGBTQ people to undocumented immigrants. Trump was unmoved, though he was clearly irritated by the impudence of this appeal right in his face.

The big question, though, is this: What are the prospects for appeals to decency and humanity like this one to break through in the face of the rising cruelty and authoritarianism that Trump is set to unleash? We’re talking about all this today with Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, who spends much of her time attempting to appeal to people’s decency on immigration. Thanks for coming back on the show, Vanessa.

Vanessa Cardenas: Thanks for having me, Greg. Really happy to be here.

Sargent: First, we’re going to play an excerpt of the sermon that the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde offered, with Trump and JD Vance sitting right there scowling. It’s a bit long, but it’s worth it. Listen to this.

Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde (audio voiceover): In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We’re scared now. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.

Sargent: Vanessa, I’m not sure I’ve heard anything like this before. Have you?

Cardenas: Well, it’s certainly powerful, and it’s an example of although we might not have mass mobilizations or people going to the streets to push back against Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, there’s a lot of Americans that are very uncomfortable with what they’re reading and seeing and hearing from him. This is an example of it. I believe the Reverend did a great job—and she did it in a powerful venue—in speaking truth to power, calling out the hypocrisy of it all and calling Trump and his family to think about what they’re doing and the harm they are creating for families that are living their lives and contributing and wanting to just be normal people going about their business and supporting their families.

Sargent: It’s key what you get out there, which is that the sermon was done with Trump and JD Vance and their family members there. JD Vance was sneering during this whole thing. One imagines he was thinking, Yeah, yeah, yeah, these illegals are taking Americans jobs. That’s what she’s demanding compassion for. That’s nonsense, but let’s put that aside for a sec. Trump is suspending refugee resettlement. Those people who are coming here legally fleeing really horrible conditions, they qualify for refugee status. So the reverend is right: Trump and Vance are cutting off this lifeline for refugees. That’s an incredibly radical thing to do at a time when we were already falling down on our international commitments. Can you talk about the human toll and the outright radicalism of ending refugee resettlement in the United States or at least suspending it?

Cardenas: Listen, this is within a very extreme policy that is really closing the door for people that are escaping real dire circumstances and sometimes have the U.S. as their last resort. Again, it is very radical. It harms people that are escaping all kinds of upheaval and persecution. The reason why they’re coming here is because there is a threat to their wellbeing, to their lives, to their families—and it is a last act of desperation. For us to shut the door on their faces really undermines what this country stands for.

Sargent: I really find it hard to believe that majorities support suspending the refugee program.

Cardenas: Yes, and what we know based on our research is that while Americans are very uncomfortable with how ineffective and inefficient our system is, they really reject extreme measures such as this one. They still value America’s place in the world as a place of refuge. They still also value our heritage as a nation of immigrants. Americans very much feel strongly attached to that because, as you know, most of us are immigrants. We have an immigrant background. The more we see some of these policies and the way in which they’re implemented, [the more] they’re going to reject these policies.

Sargent: I hope you’re right. I want to get at another angle here. It’s my strong suspicion that majorities of the American people also understand the undocumented population in terms very similar to the ones outlined in that sermon. They’re hardworking people, we rely on them; they’re deeply woven into our communities, into our economies; they’re not criminals, as she put it. I think majorities understand that and see it that way. But at the same time, majorities are easily seduced into believing that there’s such a serious law enforcement problem here, that the only answer is mass deportations, something that they probably are uncomfortable with on some level. You must wrestle with that tension, that contradiction and public opinion all the time, right? How do you navigate it?

Cardenas: Well, there’s truth and there’s reason to both. I do think that it is completely understandable that people are very frustrated and, frankly, really tired of promises of fixing our immigration system, and they see the dysfunction of it in a very real way. So I don’t discount that impatience—people are fed up with the dysfunction, and we have been talking about this issue for many, by this point, decades.

At the same time, people have their neighbors. They have their kids that go to the same school with immigrant kids. They have the DACA teacher that they love. They go to church and they have their fellow worshipers who are immigrants. They go to the local bodega or the Latino store. So they exist in this combination of realities where, yes, of course they want a better immigration system—they don’t like the chaos at the border—and at the same time, they have this personal connections. So I completely understand that.

How I navigate that is: We have to recognize that we have a problem, and it’s squarely, again, on Congress to fix it. And we have to push our electeds to actually make a change. What we saw in this last election though was that the economic pressures coupled with immigration issue really move people farther to the right, but I don’t believe that Trump has the permission to do whatever he wants. I think there’s a limit. I think that when people see the actual human and economic cost, they’re going to reject his policies. I think he has a very limited space in which he can operate.

Sargent: I think there’s probably something to that. At the same time, I fear that we’re in a more difficult spot than we were in 2017 in some ways. The public was really primed for a backlash. We saw crowds protesting the Muslim ban at airports. The outcry about kids in cages was international. Yet now, as Substacker Brian Buetler has outlined, the Republican propaganda apparatus is just bigger and more powerful than it was in 2018. Trump’s government is going to get very corrupted and pump out an immense amount of anti-immigrant propaganda with an official government seal on it in a newly sophisticated way. So I worry it’s going to be harder to get a public reaction this time. Are you worried about that shift in the information environment?

Cardenas: A hundred percent. The media landscape has changed a lot and that’s why it’s really incumbent upon us, many immigration organizations and progressives in general, to really speak out strongly on this and to really elevate the human impact that these policies are having.

I do worry about it. I do think the tolerance level for Trump has increased. And we saw that during the election, with everything that he was saying and all the ads. But ultimately, when people actually see the parents being taken away from their kids, when they read about the kids coming home from school and not finding their parents there, when they see their neighbors that have been living there for 10, 20, 30 years being sent away, and when we see U.S. citizens become trapped in the dragnet or when we see that American families are being asked about their citizenship papers at the hospital, I think we’re going to start seeing the backlash.

We do have a tougher job as advocates to really speak about this, not just as an “immigration issue” but an American issue that’s affecting American families, American communities, and our economy.

Sargent: Yes, that will be absolutely essential to develop a message that really stresses the importance of immigrants to Americans and to the U.S. But I got to say, Democrats lately seem to have a really tough time saying immigration is good for our country. I think that’s pretty alarming, don’t you? We just saw them all surrender en masse on the Laken Riley Act, which is awful. And I’m not seeing a whole lot of signs that they want to take this stuff on, are you?

Cardenas: No. Unfortunately, though, as somebody who has been working in politics for a long time, I’m not surprised. This is a really tough moment for Democrats. But I also feel that in many ways, there’s only a path forward. We have to rebuild and we have to reengage. As immigration advocates, we have to start painting our solutions and talking about solutions in a way that finds common ground. The years where we talked about a huge legalization program, where we had grand ideas around a comprehensive bill, I don’t think we’re there anymore. I think that we’re going to have to just be really thoughtful about how to move forward, and maybe having some policies that benefit certain segments of the population.

That’s, again, the reality check that we need to grapple with, but it’s really important for us to work with Democrats. At the end of the day, they are the ones that we can work with, and we have to do a lot of work to rebuild the trust, to rebuild their relationships.

But yes, absolutely. I’m very disappointed on what happened in Congress these last few days. Based on all the analysis we’ve seen, the bill is bad policy, and it’s bad politics. Democrats are never going to get credit for it, even though they voted for this piece of legislation that even ICE is saying that they cannot implement. That’s the bottom line for them.

Sargent: It’s absolutely appalling. Democrats couldn’t even stand up for the notion that Dreamers and immigrant minors should be exempted from mandatory detention. They could have said, OK, look, I support the underlying bill, but it’s got to be amended to secure those exceptions. I can’t, in good conscience, see those people locked up. It’s absolutely ridiculous that Democrats couldn’t draw a line on that and insist that those amendments be made in exchange for the votes necessary to break the filibuster.

Cardenas: A hundred percent. It was just really disappointing that they caved. I think that they could have done 2 percent more amendments, they could have done more again to stand united, but we didn’t see that. To me, again, it’s a signal of how much we have to rebuild. We really have to call upon Democrats that they have to provide a contrast, that they have to provide solutions that are actually going to get us to where we need to go. Because this is the other thing: This is just the beginning.

We know other bills are coming, and Democrats are going to have to be courageous and be able to defend their values and, at the end of the day, take us to better policies because these policies are completely harmful. They actually will take us farther away from our goals in terms of having a better immigration system.

Sargent: One could actually look at this sermon as a wake up call, a pricking of the conscience for Democrats as well. Democrats, time to start talking like this.

Cardenas: That’s right. That’s right. Going back to my point about humanizing this issue, Reverend Budde was really powerful in really making it clear: This is about people. This is about whether people that are picking our crops, that are working very hard, that they’re paying our taxes. And [she was] just really [powerful in] challenging these ideas that Trump is just presenting without really any nuance.

We have to challenge it. We cannot accept it. We cannot become complacent to it. We have to call it out because, at the end of the day, this is about people. And the point that I made earlier, it’s not just about immigrants, it is about our American families, about our communities. The more we drive home that point, the more people will understand the devastating consequences of Trump’s agenda.

Sargent: I will say one other really dispiriting difference between now and the aftermath of Trump’s first election. You may recall that in the 2016 campaign, he was calling Mexicans “rapists” and “killers” and everything like that, but he was still saying in some way, OK, we just want to go after illegal immigrants, not legal ones. In this campaign, they went straight out and said, You know all those people who are in Springfield, Ohio, legally, those Haitians who are here on temporary protected status, we’re going to make them illegal. They said straight out, We’re going after people who are here legally as well, and they won. That’s not something that gives me a whole lot of confidence that Democrats will take it on.

Cardenas: But here’s what I also think: It’s really important how Trump is positioning himself and positioning this issue. The reason he’s coming up with all this executive actions is because of “invasion,” which, again, is a very extreme and nativist idea that he’s based all this executive orders on. And he’s attacking our Constitution, because birthright citizenship is a constitutional right.

We have to call it out. He’s going to try to overwhelm us with the number of things that he’s going to do, but we have to call out the real strategy behind this, that this is an extremist and really an American agenda that really goes at the core of who gets to be called an American, and who decides who that is. That is really, to me, the underlying issue with just how Trump is operating and advancing his political agenda.

Sargent: I want to close this out by reading a tweet from Republican Congressman Mike Collins about the sermon, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.” Now, Vanessa, the person giving this sermon is an American citizen born in New Jersey, I believe. That’s pretty disgusting, but it’s pretty telling: Republicans don’t want people with any authority making appeals to our humanity in response to Trump’s cruelties. That’s the last thing MAGA wants. So you would think that Democrats could look at that fact that Republicans react very badly when such appeals are made and think to themselves, OK, well, you know, we can win this argument, right?

Cardenas: I believe they can. The best approach for them to win is actually to stand up and speak out for their values, provide a contrast and provide an alternative vision that we actually know works, which is a combination of a balanced approach of yes, we need to have order but we also need to have compassion and let’s stand up for our American values, particularly at time when we are being attacked in the way that Trump is attacking us. We need to stand up and provide an alternative. We cannot just afford to fold and accept what he is proposing.

Sargent: What do you think the alternative should be? Obviously, I think Democrats do have to be on the side of major asylum reform that might make some of them uncomfortable, some combination of that, along with much broader legal pathways to apply and enter in a more orderly way. I think that’s the way of the future. What do you think?

Cardenas: Well, that’s the $1,000 question, Greg. As an organization that is center-left, America’s Voice, we believe that we need a combination of reforming our asylum system, providing more resources for it, making sure that people have the day in court, but also having limits. We also need a legal pathways for people to come here in the future because migration is a reality that we cannot escape.

And I really want us to also talk about the 11 million—those people that have been here 10, 20, 30 years—we need to also put the spotlight back on them. They deserve a path to citizenship. They have been raising families. And I feel like for the last couple of years, we have forgotten about what we need to do for those communities that have been with us through very difficult moments.

So for me, it is a combination of legalizing those long settled immigrants, reforming our asylum system, and having legal pathways. That is going to have to come with some order and controls and limits; that’s inevitable. But that’s a winning combination that the American public can get behind.

Sargent: I agree. And that sermon really powerfully voiced the case for that undocumented population. That should rouse Democrats to realize that there is an argument to be made here that’s powerful, emotional, and compelling. Vanessa Cardenas, thanks so much for coming on with us.

Cardenas: Thank you for having me.

Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.