STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We had a conversation with Maryland Governor Wes Moore.
Governor.
WES MOORE: Oh, my goodness. Steve Inskeep in the Statehouse.
INSKEEP: Moore told us he's focused on his job in that Statehouse, although some Democrats talk of him as a future presidential contender. He is the nation's only sitting Black governor and a decorated combat veteran. He served in Afghanistan as an officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. That's the same unit that President Trump just sent to the Middle East.
MOORE: There was always something that we knew as paratroopers. You never authorized military force unless, A, military force was the last option, B, we had an understanding of what the mission and the end game was and, C, you were spending your time and your energy building the right kind of coalition.
INSKEEP: Moore asserts the president deployed his old unit without doing any of those things. Moore was talking on camera for the first episode of the new NPR video interview series, Newsmakers. It was not his first conversation that day about the war.
MOORE: In fact, I was speaking with a person I served with this morning. And I told him, I said, I'm just - I'm praying for our paratroopers. I'm praying for their family members. And honestly, I'm praying for the leadership of this country. I'm praying for the president. I'm praying for the secretary of defense. I'm praying that God give them guidance and vision. And I'm praying that we have leadership that can actually meet this moment.
INSKEEP: The president never did address the nation.
MOORE: No.
INSKEEP: Should he?
MOORE: Yes. To be clear, and it's important for people to understand this, we are a nation at war right now. And I know it might not feel like it to many Americans. We are a nation at war. And we have not either been spoken to from the president of the United States, we have not been to - asked to sacrifice anything as a country. We don't have a measurement of explanation as to what is going on.
INSKEEP: Even if you disagree with starting the war, does the United States now have to fight it through to a victory because a victory by Iran would be so disastrous?
MOORE: But what does a victory by the United States mean? What is a victory by the United States look like?
INSKEEP: How would you define that if you were president?
MOORE: No one has articulated that. And frankly, the - what I'm hearing from the administration, even what they're claiming as, you know, oh, we've won the war, this is not victory. What it seems like they're seeking is some kind of quiet exit strategy from something that I think that the reason we're here is because of a lack of planning that has gotten us here in the first place.
INSKEEP: How would you have handled Iran? If it was in your lap and it was back in February before the shooting started - and you know there's these negotiations going on, you know that Israel regards Iran as a threat, the United States has concerns about Iran's nuclear program - what would you have done?
MOORE: I think we all have concerns about Iran's nuclear program because I do think we are dealing with a nation that, had they gained access to a nuclear weapon, would have no problem in using it, right? That's why the negotiations were so important. That's why being able to actually come up with a nuclear deal became so important.
INSKEEP: You would've kept negotiating then?
MOORE: I think until someone could tell me, until intelligence told me that we are now hitting a point that we have an imminent threat on our hands and all forms of negotiation had hit a brick wall, that's when I think military force is something that you then tend to look at. But I don't think there's anybody who is arguing that we were at that point.
INSKEEP: Governor Wes Moore was talking in a reception room outside his office. The room is decorated with portraits of his predecessors. Unlike Moore, all the men in the portraits are white. He won office in 2022.
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MOORE: What an amazing night and what an improbable journey.
(CHEERING)
INSKEEP: He was a kid from Baltimore who lost his father young. He became a Rhodes scholar, a writer, a soldier and CEO of a foundation that fights poverty. His mother, too, once took a job with a foundation.
Was her experience with that part of the reason you did the Robin Hood Foundation?
MOORE: You know, it's funny. I think her experiences were part of the reason why I was hesitant.
INSKEEP: He says he's skeptical of charities and insisted that his should change its practices.
MOORE: Philanthropy, for many places, is almost like philanthropy for philanthropists. Like, they give away money because it makes them feel better.
INSKEEP: The Trump administration has attacked nonprofits, casting them as secretly partisan. Moore says charities should be more political, campaigning for better government policy. As for Moore's own politics, he says he's focused on winning a second term as governor this fall while his party tries to capture Congress. Democrats have the advantage.
But let's be real. How could your party still screw this up?
MOORE: (Laughter) Well, you know, I tell you, one thing that we're focusing on here in Maryland - and we're not planning on screwing anything up - is, you know, I don't think it's just about the message. I think it's about the results.
INSKEEP: He said the public expects their government to improve their lives.
MOORE: I think that Donald Trump has been a fantastic vessel for the frustration. He's just not a vehicle for the solution. And he had no desire to be that. You got to be able to show what an alternative looks like. So when you are watching how the federal government was firing federal workers, over 25,000 federal workers have been fired inside the state of Maryland, more than any other state in this country.
And what did we then decide to do? We then decided to say, how are we focusing on working with the private sector to get them employed? How are we doing innovative things like our Feds to Eds and getting federal workers into the education space? So we're showing not just that we push back, but we're showing what it means to push forward.
INSKEEP: Do you feel you have in mind what the situation is the next president is likely to face in January of 2029?
MOORE: I think that the answer cannot simply be, well, now we've just got to put everything back together, without an understanding of, well, how did this country, for a second time, allow him back into the Oval Office? There was something functionally broken. And why the process wasn't working for real families and real people, families like mine.
INSKEEP: Moore divided the next president's tasks into categories, like broken institutions that can't be fixed and broken institutions that can be. He said he even thinks of institutions that will survive Trump's term that Moore would like to break.
MOORE: For example, pardons. I would take the pardon power away from the president and every single governor. And this is actually really hard for me because last year, I did the largest mass pardon in the history of the United States of America, where I pardoned over 175,000 misdemeanor cannabis convictions in the stroke of a pen. I'm really proud of how I've used the pardon power.
And I see how the president of the United States, on Day 1, he pardoned people who attempted a coup on January 6. He's pardoning people that are now turning around and investing in his kids' business. It is disgusting and it's a grift. And as thankful as I am to be one of only 51 people in the world who can pardon an American for something, if that's how it's going to be used, I would take it from all of us.
INSKEEP: Changing the president's pardon power would require changing the Constitution. But it's on Moore's mind. He is not currently seeking the presidency but clearly is thinking about what the job should be.
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INSKEEP: Our interview with Governor Wes Moore is part of our new video interview series, Newsmakers. You can find it today on the NPR website, on YouTube, on Spotify and elsewhere.
(SOUNDBITE OF GANG STARR AND JERU THE DAMAJA SONG, "FROM A DISTANCE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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