A.R. Bernard, the pastor of the Christian Cultural Center Megachurch in Brooklyn, New York, went on Samantha Bee's TBS show this week to talk about why he walked away from President Donald Trump's evangelical advisory board.
During the interview, Bee asked Bernard when he knew that he'd made a mistake in signing up as a Trump evangelical adviser.
"Meeting two," Bernard replied.
Bee then asked him what he thought he could possibly achieve by being a member of Trump's evangelical advisory board.
"I thought that I would be a voice, a minority voice, at the table," he said. "To help influence policy, ideas, initiatives."
However, Bernard says he quickly realized that he would not have any such influence over any kind of administration policy.
"Fast forward to May 27, I'm sitting in the [White House] Blue Room next to [Trump], having dinner," he explained. "I seized a good 15, 20 minutes to talk about the inner city... It was like a person so fascinated with being where they are, that that was the most important thing."
Even though Trump didn't listen to any of his ideas, Bernard said that Trump's presidency might still prove useful in that it's forcing America to confront its problems with racism in a way that it hadn't done in years.
"So this is ripping off a very healthy and lovely band-aid to reveal the rot at the core of humanity?" Bee asked.
"Mm-hm," Bernard confirmed.
Watch the video below.
