Reverend Warnock Smears Speaker Johnson, As Republicans 'Crush People'

Tim Graham on Jun 19, 2026

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is constantly introduced in effusive tones as senior pastor at Martin Luther King's Ebenezer Baptist Church. The Democrats and their media allies love to trot him out to suggest their party is more Christian than the Republicans.

On National "Public" Radio on June 16, "All Things Considered" anchor Michel Martin relayed that after Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed, Warnock "questioned whether the Christianity cited by some Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, is more performative than substantive."

Martin is never going to question Warnock about whether leftist Christianity sounds performative, with the Democratic Party loudly advocating for the widest berth for a million abortions a year and for the entire LGBTQIA-plus culture war.

Warnock lamented systemic injustice coming from Republicans: "Isaiah says that God says to Isaiah, I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Although you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Public policy is a matter of life and death. When you knock 15 million people off of their healthcare, when you double the healthcare for another 22 million people, people die. People die as a result of that."

NPR won't do "fact-checking in real time." Any time you accuse Republicans of killing people with their alleged budget cuts -- or in this case, adding work requirements or citizenship requirements to Medicaid -- journalists just nod along with the smear.

When Martin vaguely asked if he's saying Democrats should animate their politics with faith, Warnock doubled down on the evil-GOP line: "I think what we're dealing with right now is not the difference between right and left. It's really the difference between right and wrong. It's wrong to crush people." Pro-abortion Rev. Warnock has no shame.

Martin suggested less religious folks object, that "this melding of religious belief and policy is in part what is driving the toxicity in our politics because it's not just about, oh, we disagree. It's about, oh, you are wrong, and you're not just wrong. You're evil." Despite everything he's just said, Warnock protested: "That's not how I approach it. My faith is not a weapon. It's a bridge. And what I offer in the book is not a condemnation but an invitation." He doesn't sound like a "bridge" to those evil Republicans.

Warnock claimed that Speaker Johnson said scriptures about aiding the poor are about our personal charity, not an admonition to promote government redistribution of wealth. Then Warnock conflated Johnson's purported view with slavery: "Scripture is not limited to that. And we have tragic examples in history, as I pointed out to him, about what happens when we cede all of that space. That's how you end up with a Christian slaveocracy. When you decide that the issue is your soul and individual conduct and systems don't matter, you end up with a contradiction, like a Christian slaveocracy."

The congressman from Louisiana received quite an arrogant lecture. If Johnson gave an interview to NPR now, it's easy to guess it wouldn't be a softball session like this. After all the Baptist sermonizing, Warnock concluded with an NPR-pleasing denunciation of Trump: "I'm not about to give this country over to a wannabe authoritarian."

Martin simply oozed that Warnock's new book was titled "The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on The Moral Meaning of America." The elitist media will gladly merge religion and politics when the posturing "moral imagination" of Democrat pastors puts those crooked Republicans in the ugliest possible light.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.