Full interview: Rachel Maddow talks with the bishop who asked Trump directly to show mercy

The Rachel Maddow Show

MSNBC

Madow, Washington, Rachel Maddow, Congress, Campaign, Policy, Election, President, Nbc, Public, News, Government, Maddow, Politics, Issues

4.5 • 34K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rachel Maddow talks with Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington about speaking from the pulpit directly to Donald Trump about showing mercy for the vulnerable people targeted by his policies, and what has happened since, as well as the role of the church in moral leadership in the United States.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks, you at home for joining us this hour. I am really, really happy to have you here tonight.
0:04.4	We are going to be speaking with the Episcopal Bishop of Washington yesterday, who had that incredible moment at the National Cathedral, speaking directly to Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance about human dignity and decency and mercy in a way that seems to have short-circuited Donald Trump a little bit.
0:26.6	Just an incredible moment.
0:28.1	We're going to be speaking with her live here tonight, just moments from now.
0:32.5	We also tonight look like we might be having a good old-fashioned debacle unfolding in Washington.
0:42.2	This is the second full day of the second presidential term for Donald Trump.
0:47.4	And you will recall that he received less than 50% of the popular vote to win this term.
0:53.5	He got more of the popular vote than Kamala Harris did, but he was still under 50%.
0:57.0	He was at about 49.8% of the national popular vote.
1:02.0	Today, we've got the first national polling on how the country feels about him as he starts
1:06.9	his new term.
1:08.2	And this first national polling shows that Trump's support has already
1:13.0	fallen even below that level of support that he had in the election. Reuters-Sipsos today
1:18.1	finds that Trump is starting with a national approval rating of 47%. And for context sake,
1:26.2	that is historically low for new presidents.
1:28.9	Most presidents start over 50%.
1:31.3	This is supposed to be the honeymoon period after all, right?
1:34.0	You actually expect that the number of people who voted for them will continue to be for them.
1:39.1	But then you expect sort of other people who didn't vote for them or who didn't vote at all to also come over to their side with all of the momentum and the positive press that they get for the start. In Donald Trump's
1:48.5	case, it has been the opposite. He has fallen from the amount of support that he had in the election
1:54.4	and what he had in the election was less than 50% anyway. Again, most presidents start over 50% at the start of their term. Joe Biden, for example,
2:04.3	at the start of his presidency, he was up at 55% at this point. But Trump is starting with low
	...

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