Reverend Samuel Rodriguez details his failed negotiations to expand Dreamer citizenship to 1.6 million, blaming Chuck Schumer for blocking a border wall deal and arguing that Obama-era detention cages persist under Biden due to political "wink and nod" policies. He proposes a "just integration solution" granting green cards without citizenship to non-entitled parents while critiquing "replacement theology" and churches adopting left-wing agendas over biblical justice. Ultimately, Rodriguez asserts that science supports a designer God and warns that government overreach erodes constitutional rights, calling for a return to Judeo-Christian values against rising dependency. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm glad to have you, because there's obviously a lot going on in your world, not only just past Easter and the Passover season, but obviously there's a ton going on on the immigration front, and many of the things that I've been seeing you talk about, mostly on Fox lately, are a lot of the things that I talk about on this show, and you made some sense on cable news.
That's a pretty rare thing these days, so I thought I could have you on.
For the people that don't know you, can you give me a little bit about your backstory first, and then we'll move into I'm a kid from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The Newtonian laws, Leipzig, the ever-increasing reality of a universe that continues to expand, the beauty of the Big Bang, the intricacies of the minerals that are out there in the universe, likewise on this planet, likewise in your bloodstream and my bloodstream, the mathematical probability of that happening by chance, it requires you to have more faith.
Not to believe in a designer.
And I'm sorry, I don't have that crazy cuckoo for Cocoa Puff faith.
It does require you to have more faith to believe this happened by chance.
And just the math and the science all adds up.
I'm a student of a guy named Francis Collins, who oversees the National Health Institute right now.
And he has been for a number of presidents for Obama and Trump.
So again, He discovered to a great degree, unpacked better yet, the human genome and he is a believer.
So again, I don't create a dichotomy between faith and science.
I think it's beautiful.
It's one metanarrative stream that speaks to a wonderful architect, a designer, a God.
Yeah, so speaking of your job as a preacher, in this last year where we've had lockdowns and pandemic and people out of work and all of that stuff, have you noticed people looking for something different spiritually or from the church?
When he deemed casinos and liquor stores essential, but churches and synagogues, not.
Are you kidding me?
You know, guess who gets the call for health issues?
We do.
When young men and women, right now, greater numbers in California, as it pertains to, it's unfortunate, the suicide rate, drug abuse, alcoholism, depression.
We've never seen these numbers.
Guess who they call?
They don't call the guy in the liquor store.
So Jack Daniels, You should not trump Moses and Jesus.
It's illogical, but that's what Governor Newsom did while he was having dinner at the French Laundry, and that's another story for another day.
And when government grows, it's gonna sound a little bit naive, or, you know, here it is, government grows, it pushes man and God out of the way.
This uber-dependency on government And this unbelievable obsession with Uncle Sam, it's not part of the ethos of our Founding Fathers.
It isn't.
It's anti-American.
This obsession with God, with government, instead of our God-ordained giftings and abilities, Uncle Sam is an uncle.
He'll never be our Heavenly Father.
He's just an uncle.
So we respect the uncle, unless the uncle gets drunk in that family party.
We respect the uncle, but we worship God.
And right now, and even the recent proposals from the Biden administration from the not just the 1.9 trillion, but now the infrastructure bill, all of this.
This unbridled growth of government, ladies and gentlemen, government is becoming our God.
And we are what we tolerate, so we're tolerating it.
And I know you've done this before, and just let me, for the audience's sake, that separation of church and state, that Jeffersonian letter, to that amazing church.
We have totally taken this on the ideological left.
They have taken that out of context.
And it's church should not have a place in the public sphere.
Quite the contrary.
Please do your diligence on this.
Jefferson is writing saying government should never have the right.
We have to separate government from thinking it even has the notion or the right for a moment to quelch silence limit to somehow hinder obstruct the free expression of worship and faith.
So Jefferson is saying government better not touch faith and religion.
Not the other way around.
Not that religion and faith shouldn't touch the public sphere.
We have a place in the public sphere.
People of faith.
Even that beautiful faithful expression, George Washington referenced it at the latter portion of his presidency, about this commitment to faith is the backbone.
of this new American experience.
Abraham Lincoln reiterated that.
Dwight David Eisenhower again.
Ronald Reagan, of course, elevated it to the stratosphere.
Yes.
So I do believe that we, and right now that's not happening.
Right now, government is telling me that I have to change my theology in order to accommodate cultural shifts that are generational specific.
I mean, are you kidding me?
There are laws as we speak, including the Equality Act, which is not equal.
Other attempts to diminish my ability to speak what I believe is truth, eternal truth, truth that stems from a natural law, from a moral compass that's way beyond your generation and my generation, that is the backbone of civilization.
And somehow I'm supposed to sacrifice truth on the altar of political or cultural or generational expediency.
So yes, there is a separation, but to protect the free expression of faith.
And again, even the notion of social justice, I believe in biblical justice, which, biblical justice, which is Micah 6a, do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.
It's Psalm 89, 14.
It's Luke chapter four.
So I believe in biblical justice and biblical justice is an extension of righteousness.
So, when all these things happened last year, I looked at my church.
Here's an interesting thing.
My church is 40% white, which is code word for Caucasian, 40% black, which is African American, and 20% Latino and Asian.
I am blessed to oversee a very beautifully multi-ethnically diverse congregation.
When everything happened last year, I approached the podium and I said, ladies and gentlemen, Biblically speaking, address any and all vestiges of bigotry, and we'll do it with the authority of Scripture, but we won't do it in the name of any movement that runs counter to the values that you and I hold near and dear.
We will not do it in any movement's name.
As a Christian, we're going to do it in the name of Jesus.
So, again, we can separate, but when churches begin to drink the Kool-Aid of social justice as interpreted by the ideological left, it's not just troublesome, it's the beginning of the slippery slope.
I would even argue the biggest problem in America right now is not even moral relativism or cultural decadence or even big government.
The problem in America is a lukewarm church.
It's a church in a religious community that's drinking the Kool-Aid and we're bowing?
We're bowing at the altar of race?
Somehow race just became God.
Do you realize that there are pastors that speak more about race than they do about Jesus or Moses or Abraham?
So race and sexuality just became idols.
And we are worshiping on the altar of the gods created by culture.
Created by individuals who are inclined to a morally relativistic worldview, who embrace anarchy and chaos.
And we're bowing to this, and that's the problem in America.
So what do you think the flaw was in the leadership of either the churches or the temples, or probably in the mosques as well, that allowed the people that are supposed to be the leaders, like you, the pastors, To allow it in?
Was it the fault of the pastors for allowing it in?
I mean, if enough people are coming to them with something... It's leadership.
We are more committed to likes and followers than we are to truth.
And when we're more committed to likes and followers than we are to truth, we begin to water down truth, acquiesce truth, surrender truth, and then our children will reap the consequences of our complacency.
Today's complacency is tomorrow's captivity.
And right now we are complacent and we're comfortable.
And it's a shame because our children are watching and they're going to pay the price of secular totalitarianism, of socialism, of communism, of anti-science.
There's no biology.
Human physiology doesn't matter.
Science doesn't matter.
They're going to reap the consequences of our activities in our generation.
Yeah, I can now see that my audience will get why I wanted to have you on because you're hitting so many of the topics that I talk about all the time.
I want to talk to you about immigration in just a bit, but what else did you find in this past year that people were coming to you?
Because I do sense what you hinted at there about a spiritual awakening.
I've been saying for a while, you know, at a micro level, I think an atheist or an absolutely perfect secular view of the world can work, meaning individual people can do that.
I think it takes a certain type of person, but I think it's possible.
But at the macro level, it just simply can't work.
And even the atheists and agnostics, who I have some as friends, when we have these conversations, these sort of metaphysical and cosmic conversations of the big picture, I call it the extension of the Big Bang.
It's still happening.
And they even allude to the fact, many of them, even some of them that are pretty prominent, have referenced the fact that for society to function, we need a set of morals, mores, a value system that has a viable religious spiritual component to it.
They don't negate that.
It's part of who we are as human beings.
It's part of our spiritual genome, without a doubt.
So yes, I have seen in the past year, not only just spiritual hunger, but I have seen likewise This fear of what's next, of the immediate sacrifice of our ability to express ourselves spiritually as it pertains to faith and religion at the drop of a dime.
How we have surrendered so much and how government is so much more powerful than we ever, ever would have conceived or thought of.
It's revealing, it's exposing some weaknesses in the collective of what we call the American experience and the global human experience for that matter.
Yeah, so first off, I normally don't ask a guest to come back in the middle of a show, but I'd love to have you come back when we do some more panels on religion and I'll get you on with some other religious leaders, because I think we can unpack a lot of that stuff.
But I want to shift to immigration, because that's sort of how you got on my radar.
So there's obviously a lot going on at the southern border right now.
I'll just sort of give you a vague question here, which is how should we be thinking about what's going on here?
Because it's getting very, very difficult to even understand what's remotely true.
Meaning, okay, did Obama start the cages and are the cages worse because of Trump?
And then they got better.
And now it's like everything feels like just such a mess.
Just as people of faith, Please tell me the truth.
Off the record, they went, hey, Pastor Sam, we're not like setting this up to try to convince you of anything.
This is the reality.
So I've been there.
The reality is right now under the Biden administration, there is a greater crisis than ever during the Trump administration as it pertains to children coming in.
It is tragic.
I mean, the stories are heartbreaking.
Babies, toddlers, we're talking about toddlers.
As a pastor and as a dad, It's heartbreaking to see the images.
And this is because the Biden administration gave a wink and a nod for people to come over.
They did.
They can't deny it.
They did.
And now we're reaping the consequences.
But there is a solution.
And here it is.
Here's a proposal.
Number one, We need to secure our border.
We're a sovereign nation.
Open borders doesn't work.
Open borders invites sex trafficking.
The drug cartels, they are smiling.
The cartels are smiling right now.
This idea, this notion is so anti-American.
And as a pastor committed to ending human and sex trafficking, I repudiate what's currently taking place at the border.
We need to secure the border.
Stop all illegal immigration.
We want people coming here legally, not illegally.
And we can't have it both ways.
We can't permit more people coming here illegally, breaking the law, and then we're telling people they must wear masks.
Which is it?
Right.
So there's a segment of society that has to adhere to the law, yet there's a group of individuals that don't have to adhere to or obey the law.
That lack of continuity subconsciously creates a construct which leads to behavior that produces chaos and anarchy.
A lack of coherency, right?
So we have to make up our minds.
Let's protect the border, stop illegal immigration, and we can do it even, not just through a physical wall, infrared technology, satellite imaging.
Come on, we could read the license plate from a car in Afghanistan from a satellite.
We can stop thousands crossing over the Rio Grande with backpacks.
If you're not living off government entitlement, if you're not living off welfare, and I know that you're probably using false social security numbers.
That is a crime.
You're going to have to recognize the fact that you broke the law.
That you have been breaking the law.
You should be paying some fines, but you've been here for 20, 25 years working, and some of these individuals are some of the hardest working individuals I know.
I live in California, so that's just giving freaking truth to power.
And they attend our churches, some of the most beautiful people on the planet.
They should have come here legally, by the way.
All right.
Did that ship sail?
Yes, but there's a price to pay.
We're going to give you a green card.
Stay in America.
You no longer have to fear being deported, but you're never going to become a citizen.
There's a price to pay.
How in the world can we compensate people that came here illegally with citizenship for crying out loud when there are people waiting in line legally in nations attempting to come into this country the right way?
It's just wrong.
So my proposal, which I gave to President Trump, and I gave it to a number of senators that are just close friends, I said, here, here's the proposal.
I call it a just integration solution.
And I think the vast majority of Americans would embrace this.
As a matter of fact, I know because we did some polling and they actually would, including members of the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative individuals who say that sounds fair.
All right, there's a lot of different ways we could go here.
So what do you think the wink that you're talking about, the Biden administration wink, what do you think it really is all about?
So if they're telling, you know, cause they're kind of like, don't come, maybe come in a few weeks, you can kind of come, but what do you think they're actually trying to accomplish with the wink?
Are they trying to get all these people there?
And do they have any intention of actually doing what you said, which is we've got to secure a border and it's the right of every sovereign nation to do so.
I don't think, and I say this with great due deference, I don't think the current administration has any viable commitment.
I can't measure it.
If you can't measure it, then it's not legit as it pertains to this outcome.
I don't see any sort of evidence that this administration is committed to protecting the sovereignty of America.
None.
There are many open border operatives that come from the hard ideological left.
And right now, unfortunately, they seem to have the ear of our president.
And it is unfortunate.
It is.
So I think the objective is, there's twofold.
There are those, and I can't judge everyone across the board.
I'm looking at political outcomes.
There is a group of individuals that really, with a great heart, would love to see America, you know, emerge as the phrase on the Statue of Liberty, the place of refuge and hope for people that are broken around the world.
But that's utopia.
We can't open up for the entire world.
We just don't have the bandwidth.
We're not the new Jerusalem, if you're an evangelical or a Christian.
You know, this is not heaven.
This is not the new earth, whatever you want to call it in your theological worldview.
We're not there.
So we can't, we have to protect our borders.
The second thing is, and this seems a little bit more complicit, but I know there's some conversation with leadership on the hard left, There is an attempt to change America with more voters.
There is, and it sounds, oh, that's just wild, Sam.
No, it isn't.
Again, some people are doing it with good intentions, yet Pollyanna-ish, a bit of an utopic sort of worldview.
And then there are some that have a more, I would call it wicked sort of imperative, which is, let's change the demographical landscape to such a degree That we're going to secure power for generations to come.
That's wicked because you're dealing with human lives, beautiful people created in the image of God that are seeking a better day.
We want them to do it legally.
I believe immigrants are a blessing and not a burden if they come here legally.
But I believe it is wicked and morally reprehensible to use human beings as political pawns.
That deal was one of the best deals that I've seen since working on this since 2006.
It really was.
And I met with POTUS, with President Trump on this, and I met with General Kelly, Secretary Nielsen back then, and I was blown away.
I'm going like, what just happened?
Like, what?
And his commitment.
Amazing.
And even when President Trump would speak to Hispanic Americans, to Latino Americans, He would repeat that, you know, and I'm going, whoa, this is not part of the collective sort of media exacerbated narrative of a racist president.
It's not.
I mean, you know, which is it?
Right.
And what he offered was a great deal that should have.
And again, Democrats have said no, because we can't give him a win with the Latino community and we can't give him a win on immigration.
I mean, that just destroys our narrative.
And it's a shame because again, they're playing politics with human lives.
Yeah, so speaking of the Latino community, I wonder either within your congregation or just in your life, you know, there's a lot of people saying that the Latino community that has come here legally and thrived for now generations, that they're actually more anti-illegal immigration than the average white liberal because they did it the right way and they're sort of being bucketed in with this whole thing.
Yeah, well, I can tell you, I was just in Miami and the Cubans of Miami, trust me, these are the most pro-America people you have ever, you can't even imagine a group of people that would be more pro-America, actually.
That's why I do believe, let me tell you who's in more danger, the ideological left is in more danger because of the demographical shifts in America.
Again, all we need to do is if we are committed to God over man, man over government, to limited government, to personal responsibility, to our Judeo-Christian value system as it pertains to morality, to nurturing family structures that are just flourishing, et cetera, et cetera.
If we're committed to that, then we have to engage the Latino community at a different level.
And all of us must have a greater conversation and understand that, Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore.
How do you blend your ability to lead a congregation, but to also be a public figure, to talk about politics, but also talk about religion?
I'm sure when you're given a sermon, you're trying to be as careful, well, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but I would imagine you're as careful as you can be to not be overtly political, and yet so many people now, because politics is in everything, come to you for some sort of political leadership, and because you've also worked with at least three administrations.
I am staunchly pro-life and I'm not ashamed of that.
So I made a commitment to God and to my family that I would never vote for a candidate that's not pro-life.
I just believe in the ethos of life and what it means.
But with that being said, it gives me that sort of legitimacy.
Number two, I just want to speak truth with love.
So I never come out with sort of anger, on occasion righteous indignation hopefully, but speak truth with love and love people even when I disagree with them and respect them.
So I just don't tolerate them.
It's going to become very hippie-ish now, California hippie-ish.
So, I love people that I disagree with.
Because I'm a Christian, I'm called to love, not just tolerate.
So, I disagree with you, but I respect you and recognize that you're created in God's image.
So, I love you, even though I disagree with you bitterly.
And that's the sort of way that I look at things and approach things from preachings to sermons to public platforms on the most critical and divisive of issues.
I think you slightly just answered this, but because it's the Easter season, because we just passed Easter, can you just talk a little bit about how Easter, the message of Easter, is important right now?
Yeah, you know, as a Christian, again, that message to me is just powerful.
And coming out of this COVID-19 pandemic, the fact that Jesus came out of the tomb, enables us to come to the reality that with that resurrection power, Romans 8, 11, the Apostle Paul writing said, the same spirit that resurrected Jesus lives in you.
We can come out of despair.
We can come out of anxiety, fear, confusion, chaos.
We can come out of brokenness.
We can come out of the most dire of circumstances.
Jesus came out of the tomb.
You and I can come out of the most precarious negative of circumstances by faith.
That's the resurrection message, that there is eternal life to the vicarious atoning work of Christ.
And there's life even beyond this life.
But when we're on this side of eternity, we can be light and live out that life where I just don't ask God for a blessing.
I ask God to make me a blessing, where I ask God to make me the answer to someone else's prayer.
I really believe that through that resurrection message, we can change the world.
I embrace them because it reminds me of my humanity and it prompts me to have a continual conversation with God, with my thoughts, to prune, to test my ideology, my belief system.
I think it's beautiful.
And I don't think God is ever afraid of our questions.
Ever.
I think we have a God who welcomes queries and questions.
I love it.
I just absolutely love it.
Hey, Adam and Eve, Genesis.
God turns around and says, after the fall, hey Adam, where are you?
Well, then that's a perfect segue because, you know, as you bring up Adam and Eve and we can talk, obviously, about biblical stories, you know, he did so much on these biblical stories.
And what I saw that was so fascinating when I was on tour with him was that people who were not religious, They were either atheists or agnostic or just sort of a-religious or hadn't really thought about it much.
Suddenly they're hearing him talk about these stories that they kind of know through culture or maybe some religious teaching or something and it was changing them and it was just incredible for me to see night after night.
I actually spoke to my wife about this before we came together for this interview.
Last night I said, honey, I need to be careful.
I find myself on the fence dipping a little bit on, not drinking the Kool-Aid of despair, but things are just going to hell in a handbasket legislatively as it pertains to values and rights that we have.
So what's in my mind is instead of focusing on the darkness, turning on the light.
And how do we do that?
Let's mobilize people.
Let's message and mobilize for the purpose of not drinking the Kool-Aid and tolerating this reality as if we could do absolutely nothing to build a firewall.
I want to build a firewall of righteousness and justice.
I have this crazy worldview that we can do this.
We can push back.
Moral relativism, cultural decadence, big government telling me there is no such thing as gender and truth and science and faith and God.
We can push back against anarchy and chaos.
That's what's on my mind.
A multi-generational, multi-ethnic movement of righteousness and justice, truth and love.
Are you shocked that so many, I mean, the thing that always gets me with Californians, especially I'm in LA, it's like they always know something's wrong.
If you ask someone, how's it going in LA?
Everyone's like, oh, there's homeless people everywhere.
The drugs, the taxes are high.
And then, and then you're like, all right, well, you do realize we've just voting for one party endlessly forever.
So when he came along and just alienated, flipped off the Latino vote, boom, that was the beginning of a downhill sliding cycle that he gave California to one party.
And it's dangerous, one party rule.
However, the level of frustration right now and angst It's up here.
So we have moderate Democrats and what I call thinking Democrats that don't drink the ideological Kool-Aid, but are centrist and more moderate, more common sense.
The JFK, that remnant, that's still around, minority, but still around, that John F. Kennedy sort of Democrat, they're waking up and going like, what is this?
So I think California could actually change.
It's doable.
Just requires a lot of different coalitions, very unique coalitions.
Well, on that note, I mean, I'm trying to do more of these types of shows to give people some things that aren't just in that horizontal world that we have, but also in that vertical world we have.
So I hope you'll come back.
And one of these days we'll meet somewhere in SoCal when they let us out of our houses.