JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Part of this week's festivities for the transition of power in the White House was an interfaith service at the Washington National Cathedral yesterday. The Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde delivered the sermon and ended with a direct plea to President Trump, who was seated in the front row.
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MARIANN EDGAR BUDDE: In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.
SUMMERS: She went on to talk about immigrants who may be at risk of deportation under new Trump policies.
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BUDDE: I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.
SUMMERS: Joining us now is Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. Welcome to the program.
BUDDE: Thank you so much.
SUMMERS: I'd like to start by asking you what made you decide to make this direct appeal to President Trump, and when did you make that decision?
BUDDE: I had been preparing all along, because it was the purpose of the service, a sermon on unity. We were gathering to pray for the unity of the country after a divisive election season, so that had been in my mind. And I had been thinking about what is unity in a country as diverse, and in some estimations, as polarized as we are. So that's what got me started, the foundations of unity. And in the beginning part of the sermon, I listed what those were.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
BUDDE: Respecting the dignity of every human being and honesty and humility. And as I was coming to the end and I was reflecting on it and talking to different people, I realized there was a fourth. And that was in a country - to be united as a country with so many, you know, riches of diversity, we need mercy. We need compassion. We need empathy. And I, rather than list that as a broad category, as you heard me say, I decided to make an appeal to the president. Because I was hoping to - not only to him, but in speaking to him, to everyone who was listening to me speak to him - to help us remember that we...
SUMMERS: Bishop Budde, are you still with us?
BUDDE: ...Speak of broad categories of people. I am. Can you not hear me?
SUMMERS: Oh, please. No, go ahead. Continue.
BUDDE: Oh, I'm so sorry. No, just to say how danger it is to speak of people in these broad categories, and particularly immigrants as all being criminals or transgender children somehow being dangerous, that we could be kinder. And I decided to ask him as gently as I could to have mercy. That's why I did it.
SUMMERS: Yeah. I'll ask quickly, in that moment as you were addressing him - many of us have seen the video - were you able to see the way that the president, the vice president, those around him responded to you in that moment?
BUDDE: (Laughter) I've been asked that a lot, and I say the same thing. I never can - I've long since given up trying to interpret people's reaction when I'm in the pulpit because I'm almost always wrong, right?
SUMMERS: Yeah.
BUDDE: It's just too hard to be able to tell. And if I worried too much about it, I wouldn't be able to finish, right?
SUMMERS: Sure.
BUDDE: So I try in the moment not to take to - not to read too much into people's - my perceptions of their body language.
SUMMERS: Sure.
BUDDE: So, no, I couldn't really say in the moment that I could tell.
SUMMERS: Well, let me ask you this about how President Trump responded after the fact. He was asked immediately after the service what he thought. He told reporters that he did not believe that the service was good.
BUDDE: Right.
SUMMERS: And then he followed up today on Truth Social. He went on to say that you were - and I'm quoting him here - "a radical left hard-line Trump hater." He and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, have both said that you should apologize. What do you say to that?
BUDDE: Well, I'm not a Trump hater. First of all, I don't hate the president, and I pray for him. And I don't agree with some of his views of the country and the way - the decisions he makes, but I certainly don't hate him. I don't think anyone would consider me a - what did you say, a leftist, woke, radical?
SUMMERS: A radical left, hard-line Trump hater, were his words.
BUDDE: Yeah. Yeah, I'm a 65-year-old grandmother, and I am not those things. So I don't know what to say except you don't know me, Mr. President. And I don't think I portrayed myself in that way in the pulpit. I don't feel there is a need to apologize for a request for mercy. And I don't feel that there is a need to apologize to speak to the unity of this country that includes people that were not at all referenced in the unity that he spoke of the day before in his inaugural address. So, no, I don't feel the need to apologize. I regret that I never - you know, I regret that it is - I don't know. What do I regret? I regret that it was something that has caused the kind of response that it has, in the sense that it actually confirmed the very thing that I was speaking of earlier, which is our tendency to jump to outrage and not speak to one another with respect. But, no, I won't apologize...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
BUDDE: ...For what I said.
SUMMERS: A question for you, if I can. As a faith leader, you oversee churches here in Washington, where we broadcast from. And according to new policy from the Department of Homeland Security, immigration authorities are now able to enter sensitive places...
BUDDE: Yeah.
SUMMERS: Including places of worship...
BUDDE: Yep.
SUMMERS: ...To conduct arrests. I want to get your take. What will you do as a leader?
BUDDE: Well, we've been preparing for this for some time. And we do have churches and all kinds of service centers for - that serve lots of people, but particularly immigrant communities, congregations that are made up primarily of immigrants. So we have been working on helping people to know how to respond if someone approaches the door of a church, what our rights are, what is needed. I mean, we can't stop immigration from coming in. We've never been able to stop them. But how to minimize breaches of the law or overreaches of the law from - and making sure that people are being respected.
But we're also having some very hard conversations about what happens if parents are separated from their children? And how can we care and support? And, you know, I just need to tell you that, as I said from the pulpit, people are really afraid. And these are our neighbors. And these are our fellow community members and people that we - and many of whom we rely on for much of our lives. And so I have great compassion and great concern for them.
SUMMERS: We have been speaking with Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. Thank you so much for your time and speaking with us.
BUDDE: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you so much. Thank you.
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