The Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Georgia, said in 2017 that the nation’s “pre-existing condition” is “racism,” according to a report.
Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta who is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a Jan. 5 runoff election, made the comments in June 2017 at a New Baptist Covenant event, Breitbart News reported Monday.
“We are in a special moment. We are in an evil moment. We are in a tragic moment, and I suggest to you that our politics is symptomatic of our sickness,” Warnock said, according to a newly revealed clip of his speech. “We’ve got a lot of problems, but I would not be a prophet if I did not tell you that racism is America’s pre-existing condition.”
“Like the insurance companies, nobody wants to go there. Nobody wants to cover it because we wonder what it would cost. We, the land of the free, and the incarceration capital of the world,” he added.
Warnock and Loeffler are locked in a crucial race in Georgia that could determine which party has a majority in the Senate.
Democrats need Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who’s challenging GOP Sen. David Perdue in the Peach State, to win their races in January to give them a 50-50 tie in the Senate.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be able to break any tie votes.
Loeffler has zeroed in on Warnock’s comments in his sermons to paint the pastor as “the most radical and dangerous politician in America.”
She also shared a clip from October 2016 as Warnock addressed President Trump’s surge in support, saying “America needs to repent for its worship of whiteness.”
Warnock’s campaign said that comment was taken out of context.
Warnock has made headlines recently as more excerpts from his sermons emerge amid the election.
In a 2018 videotaped sermon, first reported by Jewish Insider, Warnock blasted Israel after a White House ceremony lauding the relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — a move supported for decades by both Democratic and Republican leaders and implemented by Trump.
“It’s been a tough week. The administration opened up the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Standing there [were] the president’s family and a few mealy-mouthed evangelical preachers who are responsible for the mess that we found ourselves in, both there and here — misquoting and misinterpreting the Scripture, talking about peace,” he said.
“Meanwhile, young Palestinian sisters and brothers, who are struggling for their very lives, struggling for water and struggling for their human dignity, stood up in a non-violent protest, saying, ‘If we’re going to die, we’re going to die struggling.’”
Warnock went on to compare the struggle of Palestinians with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
“Yes, there may have been some folk who were violent, but we oughta know how that works out,” Warnock said.
“We saw the government of Israel shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey. And I don’t care who does it, it is wrong. It is wrong to shoot down God’s children like they don’t matter at all,” he continued.
Warnock also praised Rev. Jeremiah Wright after his controversial “God Damn America” sermon surfaced when Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008.
At the time, Obama advisers fretted that the replaying of Wright’s fiery sermon might cost the candidate the presidency.
“No no no, not God bless America, God damn America, that’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people,” Wright thundered in the videotaped sermon.
“God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human, God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme,” Wright had said.
Warnock said he was “dispatched” to defend Wright after a tape of the 2003 sermon went public.