Warnock calls Trump ‘plague’ on nation’s conscience, says Black voters won’t support him

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said Wednesday that Black voters will not vote for former President Trump this November.

Speaking on MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” Warnock, one of only four Black senators, said the former president is trying to take the country backward. 

“Donald Trump is a plague on the American conscience and the American nation,” Warnock said. “They’re trying to take us backwards; Joe Biden is trying to take us forward. And the choice this November is between the America of Jan. 5 that has a place for kids like me and for Appalachian kids, poor kids, and the America of Jan. 6 that sees our neighbors as enemies.”

Warnock said it was the voters of Georgia who “saved the day” in 2020 when they elected him, Democratic Sen. John Ossoff and President Biden. 

“Who would have thought that when the nation was at this critical place, that it would be Georgia that would make the difference, sending its first African American senator and its first Jewish senator to the United States Senate from a state in the Old Confederacy, a state in the old Jim Crow South. We literally gave the country a chance,” he said. 

From 1972 to 2016, Georgia was solidly Republican. But many credit Black voter turnout for turning the Peach State purple — and for helping elect Biden. 

Recent polls, however, show Trump making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men. 

Still, Warnock, who also serves as senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, dismissed the notion that Black voters will support Trump in November. 

“As somebody whose name was on the ballot five times in Georgia in less than three years and who preaches every Sunday from Martin Luther King Jr.’s pulpit, I think I know a little something about Black voters, and I can tell you that Black voters are not going to show up and vote for Donald Trump. Not in any appreciable numbers,” Warnock said, adding that polls will fluctuate between now and November. 

“The truth is, most Americans aren’t really paying much attention until after Labor Day,” Warnock said. “And so, we’ll continue to make the case that really we’re talking about the soul of our country.”