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Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he believed the entire country has “a low-grade fever” caused by anger and trauma.

Host Kristen Welker said, “Do you feel like there’s a public anger and almost mistrust of people working together, reaching across the aisle to find that common ground?”

Warnock said, “I think the whole country has what I call a low-grade fever. You know, some mornings you wake up and you just don’t feel really well. You can’t even put your finger on it. We’ve been through four years of COVID and people, you know, the early years of that, the early months of that, having to shelter in, all the trauma around that, 20 years of what felt like an endless war, and then demagogues who exploit this moment through exacerbating the fault lines, the cultural fault lines of division in our country. I think people just feel the full weight and the trauma of all of that.

And what I would encourage us to do, especially in this season, is to look toward one another rather than to figure out — you know, rather than thinking about how we can hurt one another, how we can pray with one another rather than prey on one another. And, you know, I still have a great hope for this country, our ideals of unity, of inclusion, of equality. And the American story is about pushing us closer towards those ideals. And there have been moments when the democracy has expanded, there have been moments when it’s contracted. But any woman will tell you that even contractions are necessary for birth. And so I remain hopeful even in this moment. But it’s going to be hard work.”

Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN