On the Front Lines of Charity (Guest: Jason Jones)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:11] Speaker B: How are you doing, Eric? [00:00:12] Speaker A: I forgot how like inspiring your bumper music is. [00:00:17] Speaker B: I want to get people fired up, you know. [00:00:19] Speaker A: Fired up. Let's go. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Well, you fired me up, Jason. I admit it. You've been on a couple times and we were talking a little bit before we went on air about some stuff you're doing. I really want to get into this. You know, you're the founder and president of Vulnerable People Project. And before we even get started, I just want to tell people a great new book from Crisis Publications. So you think I'm not going to promote it? Guys, come on. I mean, it's literally guys Crisis right on the back there. It's dispatches from the great campaign defending life on the front lines. And really it's a. It's. I mean, it just really is a kind of almost a journal of your work. Trying, you know, world trying to, you know, bring the Christian, the gospel to place. Don't hear it very often. And protection who are in really bad. We'll talk about that in a moment. You know, about you is you okay? Most people who run charity organizations, they try very hard to stay non controversial. You seem to do the opposite. [00:01:23] Speaker A: I try really hard. I'm just bad. [00:01:25] Speaker B: You want to be controversial. [00:01:26] Speaker A: I do not want to be controversial. I really do not. No, I do not. No one wants to be attacked. No one wants to alienate friends. No one wants to ostracize themselves. No one wants donors to call you and yell at you. Like, these are daily occurrences for me. But, you know, it was something that I read from Renee Girard maybe 15 years ago or so that liberated me from this worry. I used to think, you know, my whole. In college, I had a very. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to gain influence and access to power and wealth and leverage those relationships to serve the most vulnerable people in the world. That the only way you could get people to care for them is through relationships because there is no political advantage. There's, you know, so how do you get people to serve vulnerable communities when it comes at a risk? And I thought the only way to do this is to build relationships and leverage those relationships. So that was just my very simple goal. And that's one of the reasons we make movies, too. It's to, you know, it's to inspire and influence the masses, but then also to gain sort of clout in the entertainment industry where I can leverage celebrity for our causes, which we have done well. But then it's every couple of years I have to blow it all Up. And I don't like doing that. It's like, oh, here we go again. You know, Covid. I was very kind. I was the first American arrested leading a demonstration against COVID policy and was actually about preventing famine, that you guys are about to starve the developing world by slowing down production, processing, and distribution. And of course, that alienated a lot of my conventional donors. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Didn't you make the front page of Drudge back when Drudge was a thing? [00:03:02] Speaker A: I was in handcuffs on the COVID of Drudge. When. When our friend Steve Bannon was on the COVID of Drudge in handcuffs, I texted him, hey, that was my thing. You know, you're stealing my thunder. But yeah, no, I don't like doing that. In fact, when we were going to the event, I said to my wife, you know, I was kind of the de facto leader. I didn't even want to be the leader of the event. Somehow I just kind of just became that. And I said, let's just go give our speeches and sneak off to a beach, a remote beach somewhere, because we're evading Covid restrictions. And it just didn't go down that way again with Gaza. I did not in any way want to alienate or hurt people that I'm very close to. I didn't want to confuse my donors. I didn't want to draw my organization into a strange place. But it just got to a point where I felt if I did not stop, start speaking out. And this was within two weeks, the first thing VPP did after October 7th was put armed guards outside of synagogues and African countries that where we are already guarding churches from Islamist threats. This was my first response. But within two weeks, the church was bombed. And then I began to see just the civilian casualty toll rack up and sort of the indiscriminate way in which this world was being waged. And I felt like if I don't speak up, no one will. I get mad at people like Bishop Barron and Father Mike Schmitz who have not said a word. But then I have to say, you know, look, they are a part of big institutions. They have. They have something to lose. I always say, and this is why I'm the guy to run vpp is I'm a loser with high self esteem. No failure will undermine my confidence, and no success will make me stop feeling like a loser. So, like, if I'm not going to run into these battles, I can't expect anyone else to that. They have things to lose. They have a reputation, they have clout. They have Large organizations with institutional grants, Vulnerable People Project. With the exception of a few very quirky and wonderful major donors that support us, we have, you know, we're funded by Catholics, you know, you know, folks. Just the folks writing us. I think our average donation is $64 a year. So. So I. That's why I do it. But I really want to say, Eric, I don't like it. It's a bit of a spiritual exercise. I appreciate that part of it, but it's not pleasant. [00:05:28] Speaker B: Yeah, and I feel it, too. I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't like it either. What I think, though, is different about you is that most of my guests, and including me, the host, are mostly talking heads. We talk on air about these things, we write about them. And obviously, I think that's important. I mean, I do it. I'm not saying I'm not insulting, talking heads being one of them. But the difference is you're not talking head because you actually go out there and do things and make things happen. So when you speak, I think there's a lot. Like, I remember we've run a couple of your articles at Crisis, and I will continue to run them as long as you send them to me. But, like, you know, a couple of them were very critical of Israel and what it's doing. And, you know, people are calling you anti Semitic. And I'm like, you are sitting there, you know, Mr. Commenter, usually anonymous, but not always commenter, saying. Calling him anti Semitic. And the guy literally has been protecting synagogues and protecting Jews from being killed. So, like, I think he's done more than you have, Mr. Commenter, to. To. To help Jews. And so it's kind of, you know, ironic that you're calling him anti Semitic. And I think that's. I think that we need more of that. Is what I'm trying to say is, like, people who are actually on the front lines, like you, doing things, you know, helping the poor, helping the vulnerable. I think that's. That is if you look at the history, you know, I've done a lot of studies on evangelization and looked at the history of evangelization, how the church grew, especially in the early church. It always is based upon our actions. First people see the witness of Catholics and say, okay, these people love us. For some reason, I don't understand why. I'm going to ask them why. And then they find out, oh, it's because they see Jesus in me. Maybe this Jesus guy isn't so bad. Maybe I should look into Him. I mean if you look at the early church, particularly how they grew, it was because like when a plague would come into a town, all the rich people would pagans would scatter, the Christians would come into town to take care of the sick and vulnerable and people get converted and be like wow, look at what these people are willing to do. So I do think that's something we're not always good at. So that's why I love promoting what you're doing now. Let me just, I want to go back a little bit though on Vulnerable People project. Not that hard to say and kind of what you guys are doing. Tell me a little bit about how what the evolution of it was you can't spoke of a little bit. But like you're, you're today. You know, I looked at your site, you know you're in Sudan, Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia, Afghanistan, you're in Gaza, you know, you're all these places. How did it start though? Like was it just like hey, I'm going to help out some people in Africa or something? I mean what'd you do? [00:08:22] Speaker A: No, well, you know, I don't want to bore you with my own sort of drama, but you always. It began with me as a 17 year old soldier when I was in basic training and my high school girlfriend was hiding her pregnancy and her father found out very prominent Catholic man in Chicago and I was sort of white trash. Dropped out of high school the day I turned 17 and joined the army. So I can empathize. Now looking back at this father who's someone I really respected because my mother had me at 16 and obviously we were on a different side of the tracks and they had like a big beautiful established Chicago family and they had a home with stables and a lake and I would go to their family parties and just kind of be in awe sort of their manners and their dress and their dignity. And I really respected him. But obviously I was shattered. He took her to get a forced third trimester abortion while I was in basic training. And he was a prominent Catholic. He was actually very close to Cardinal Bernadine, one of his best friends. And so that for me, I was raised in an irreligious family, maybe even anti religious. But my militant, I became a militant atheist and committed to ending abortion the same moment. [00:09:40] Speaker B: Wow. [00:09:41] Speaker A: As strange as that sounds, wow. And then I was a young infantryman and then it just kind of morphed. I didn't even know understand the pro life movement or the boundaries or the politics of it all. I just knew I wanted to be a strong man. And I wanted to protect the vulnerable from violence. I knew I was a high school dropout. I knew I started reading like I would. I had Plato's. I don't know why, but the first two books I bought at a little bookstore at the mall in Hawaii. I was at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, at this mall called Pearl Ridge Mall. I bought Plato's Republic and Machiavelli's the Prince. And I laminated them both. And they would be in my rucksacks as we, you know, bopped around the earth. And I'd be in like foxholes in Thailand under a poncho reading, you know, reading the Prince and underlining it like an evangelical underlines the Bible. I was just trying to begin to understand the political life from scratch almost. But then I had an officer who saw my passion. And even as a young dropout infantryman, he was letting me take college classes. So I'm the only infantryman I know of that while they were on active duty, was allowed to go to college, you know, at the same time. And, and I was volunteering for pro life groups. So to me, I just. And I thought maybe I'd become a Green Beret. I was looking at how I can do this, and I just wanted to protect the vulnerable from violence. And I didn't see a difference between the child in the womb and the child in a war zone. And. And I began to study the church in the pro life movement and get, as I'm getting introduced to it through the Knights of Columbus and Hawaii Right to Life. And I bumped into the consistent Ethic movement. And that kind of repulsed me because it compared abortion to unlike and incommensurate issues. And I felt that that was dehumanizing to the child in the womb and it undermined the seriousness of the issue. So I had this dream as an atheist to found an organization that would fight like in commensurate issues to abortion. And then when I got out of the army, I went to the University of Hawaii, started the pro life student union. And through my pro life student union on campus, I, you know, I was very active on everything like Tiananmen Square massacre protests and when Chinese officials would come to the East west center, which is located at the University of Hawaii. When I was in graduate school, still active in this clubs I was creating, I condemned NATO for its high altitude bombing in the former Yugoslavia, killing so many civilians, actually, they tried to drum me out of graduate school. I wrote, it's the first essay in that book. And it's from 1999 and I called for the disbanding of NATO after the scandal of Yugoslavia. So. And that was again, controversy. I was probably the only civilian who was in military science and operational studies program. I think I was the only civilian in there with all these field grade officers. And they were scandalized that someone in this program would publish this article and that. And, but that's. [00:12:47] Speaker B: Do you remember who you published that with? [00:12:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it was Hawaii Pacific University. So I was a student of Hawaii Pacific University. And this graduate program was really created to serve. [00:12:56] Speaker B: Okay. [00:12:57] Speaker A: The large military. [00:12:59] Speaker B: So all your classmates saw it and read it and everything. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It was very shocking and again, it was uncomfortable. Yeah, but, but what's really prepared me for all of this work was being an anti abortion activist in the late 80s and early 90s. Because everything people will tell me on Gaza, they told me about abortion. I mean really, even within the Republican party until about 2010, it began to change in 2004, but until about 2010, to be a pro lifer within the structure of the party was always a battle. And fighting that, well, fighting for the flat. And as a young, I was chairman of the Young Republicans, people would say, jason, we appreciate your compassion, we appreciate your commitment, but you know, you're a bit extreme on this issue. You know, we're a pro life party, but we don't want to change the laws, but we want to be a big tent. But so I, I've heard this and so a lot of people think that my work is grounded in what I did in the military. It is not at all. This is the flowering of my work as a pro life activist and what has given me the courage to stand with the communities I stand with, whether it's the Uyghur in China or the Palestinians or, you know, the embattled Jewish communities in Africa. I, I just, I just, I know what it's like to lose a child to violence when it's unpopular. It would be. It had been unpopular to advocate for my child. And so I'm not going to allow that to consider. In fact, it's, it's actually like a big arrow. This is where you should be talking. It comes with cost. [00:14:36] Speaker B: Really. Your focus in is the vulnerable who are facing violence. That's kind of your main focus of your, of your work. And when did you start VPP? [00:14:46] Speaker A: So in 2002, I founded it as the Campaign for Human Rights and Dignity. And then I changed the name to Hero in 2004 because the human Rights, education and relief organization because Amnesty International had made an announcement that they didn't want to do something because they didn't want to put their employees in danger. And I thought, I'm going to lose employees working with me. Some people are going to die. I need heroes. How can you be a human rights organization and not be willing to take risks? That kind of scandalized me. It struck me as strange. And we lost three employees this summer, two, three weeks ago in Gaza and we lost an employee to Boko Haram in Nigeria defending seminarians in July and then. [00:15:34] Speaker B: So I just wanted that, that's something I want to like ask about. What is that like for you? I mean, I can't imagine what that's like for you because obviously they're doing good work. They're, you know, they're helping the vulnerable. But yet, I mean, I'm not trying to be morbid but like, you know, they die, you know, working for, for, for Europe, you know, for vpp. I mean, as the founder of vpp, how do you, I mean, how do you process that? I guess what I'm asking, I can't even comprehend it. That's why I wanted to ask, if you don't mind. [00:16:05] Speaker A: I can't comprehend it either. You know, I love the pod. I love these formats because we can be really open and I feel like this is a family. I, you know, I see these talking heads talk about woke conservatives who are crying all the time, right? And I wrote a response to that. I cry a lot. Like I cry a lot. You know, I have a chair. [00:16:24] Speaker B: Not in that situation. [00:16:25] Speaker A: I have a chair in the back. And I remember one day we lost somebody and I was just sitting there in the pouring down Texas rain and just I couldn't sleep and I was all night and I, and I wonder why is this affecting me so much, so emotionally. A friend of mine said, why you shouldn't be rocked by things that you can anticipate, but you are rocked. And when you're the head of an organization and we do everything we can also, for example, the two employees we lost. I went to Jordan twice. I worked very hard to set up this baby formula distribution system. We were finally staging 5,000 cans of Baby formula into Gaza to be distributed. And Israel knew. They even said to npr, we know very well who VPP is, but we don't know if we bombed their warehouse of okay, they knew our truck, they knew where our truck was going. Our truck got there. We had that warehouse for three months. We had tons of food in It. And then within hours of the baby formula being delivered by God, by God's grace, it was in the evening, it was at night. So there were only two employees there, but two of our contractors died. And so you, you know, you look in Nigeria, I'll give you Nigeria, because I can be more open about who we lost in Nigeria. The. The young man that is was working for our vulnerable parish program, where we have armed security. We install cameras and solar and other security protocols and systems and higher security guards for the most vulnerable parishes in. In Africa. A young man with three children in Nigeria in July was attempting to defend three seminarians who were being kidnapped, and he was killed. He has a wife. He has three children. And how he responded is, you know, his wife will receive his salary for 20 years, and we're paying for all of them to get a Catholic education, but they lost their father. [00:18:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And I want to make sure. I think I know the answer, but I want to make sure I'm clear. Situation Nigeria, you talk about vulnerable parishes and like, so basically you're hiring security to protect seminarians, protect the parishes. Please be explicit. What are they protecting? [00:18:26] Speaker A: Where are you protecting them from Islamist extremists? So I've lost employees this summer to Islamists, and I lost employees to Israel. Yeah. And. And, you know, it's like people will say to me, you don't understand the threat of Islamism. Are you insane? Like, are you serious? Eduardo and I. I mean, Eduardo Verastigi and I were in Sudan in 2019 and had a run in with the Janjaweed, the devils on horseback, which was really a hair raising. I had to call my wife on a satellite phone. I thought it was my goodbye. Like, I'm not naive. [00:18:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:59] Speaker A: And Eduardo Veracity's response was, the world will know how much we love Jesus, if you want to know what that guy's like and really like. I mean, he's ugly, of course, but. Yeah. You know who Eduardo is? He's the movie star. Yeah. My business partner in films. But, you know, obviously I know the. The threat of Islamist extremism, but I also know that I can see my co. Religionists who listen to Protestant media saying things like, a prominent Catholic head of an organization told me a couple of days ago, it really was very hard for me. I said to my wife the next day, I feel like I broke. I'm a high school kid who just got dumped by his girlfriend. He said to me, jason, we should turn all of Gaza into pink mist. You know, children, Christians, all of Gaza, and So it's not as if just Muslims or Jews or Hindus, the Hindu va, are going running amok, but we see within our own co. Religionists and especially in the ecclesial communities outside of, you know, the church, Christian ecclesial communities this, the, the Christian Zionists that they, they'll say the most genocidal rhetoric. And you know, I see Saint Maximilian Colby over your shoulder. He was a harsh critic of Zionism, so harsh that his canonization was opposed by Zionist group organizations. Yet he died because he was a fierce critic of Hitler and ended up in Auschwitz. He, he died before the show even kicked off. Right. Yeah. Conference wasn't for another six months. Auschwitz was not a death camp when Maximilian Colby died. It was a concentration camp. Would be seven or eight months before the Nazis turned these concentration camps into death camps. And even in that early point, he was there for defending Jews and he traded his life for a fellow Pole. So what. I am so grateful to be Catholic. I couldn't imagine being not Catholic in this time, and I couldn't. And I, I have a new respect for the great heroes of the 20th century, like, like Dietrich von Hildebrand and Maxim Lane Colby and Eric Vogelin. And my, and one of my great influences is the Jewish thinker Hannah Errant. You know, I don't know how they could have. Without the scan, without. We have the 20th century to learn from. They didn't, you know. Right. We're learning from how they responded and they responded so beautifully to the problems of their day. And. Yeah, it's just, I can't imagine not being Catholic and trying to engage in the challenges of today thoughtfully. It'd be very, It'd be almost impossible to me. [00:21:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So how long. I saw you're in a number of different countries in Africa on all those countries, like Sudan, Nigeria, Malawi and Zambia are that, Is that all protecting vulnerable Christians And I think you said, didn't you say now you're protecting synagogues as well? [00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah, we're probably the only organization that protects. We have armed guards outside of girls schools in a Central Asian country. I won't say which one, but you can guess. You probably know. And that's with the government's permission. But we have armed guards outside of one of the only girls schools in this country that we also support the school. So regarding Muslim girls, we, we, we are guarding a few synagogues in Africa and a lot of churches. Yeah, it's. [00:22:34] Speaker B: So you're guarding Christians, Jews and Muslims, basically, whoever's in danger. [00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah, we don't, we don't ask. Have you been baptized? Can you say the Nicene Creed? [00:22:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:45] Speaker A: You know, and, and we, I really do. I. You know, people say, do you, do you. Do you evangelize or do you. No, we do not. We do not. Like, first of all, we'll get people killed. You know what I mean? Like, if I'm texting somebody, hey, download the Hollow app, and the Taliban raids their house and they got the Hollow app on their phone, like, I'm not going to do that. But we are very intentional and that everyone knows why we do what we do, right? [00:23:17] Speaker B: And the truth is, I'm going to correct you. You do evangelize because evangelization is obviously, you use words at some point, but it really is a foundation of action and being that witness. And like you said, if people know what, what's behind what you're doing and that, that does have evangelization impact. [00:23:38] Speaker A: And if you go to vulnerablepeopleproject.com or read any of my writings, you know, I go on Alex Jones's show and half his audience loses its minds. They go, this isn't. What is this? Catholic Story Hour? You know, people like, how do you go? I'll go on it. You know, it's. It's like. [00:23:55] Speaker B: But yeah, you're saying you're prudent, though, obviously, like you said in, in these. [00:23:58] Speaker A: I'm not going to get someone killed. [00:23:59] Speaker B: Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And in truth, if you look at. At a lot of, you know, the, the great saints, they. They did the same thing. Like, I'm actually reading a book about C. Maximilian Colby right now, his time in Nagasaki in, In Japan. He was. Spent six years there. And, you know, he created these, you know, he. The Knights of Militia, the newsletter. He would print stuff like that. They didn't go door to door and like, and like, you know, you know, do like, preach the gospel like that. They would do these things, but oftentimes they would interact with non Catholics. And it wasn't like they just said to them, okay, you need to become Catholic on day one. It was much more of them. We're going to live a hardcore Catholic life, the life of a Franciscan in their case, and, and that. And people were drawn to them and they did become. People did become Catholic, but it wasn't like what we might think of as evangelization of. Okay, they go out there and preach. That's not actually. They didn't go around preaching. That's not what. [00:24:58] Speaker A: There's clever ways you can do it, right? Like, and I will Share my faith. I go, why do you do this? I share. Right. I got Ecclesiastes 4:1 tattooed on my hands. When you shake my hand, you see it like my scapular. I get criticized because my scapular always likes to climb up. I don't know. Mine does too. [00:25:14] Speaker B: I can't. [00:25:15] Speaker A: I don't know. Do we have bad posture? I don't know. Someone put on one comment trolling me, said, he's a horrible Catholic. He always shows his scapular. That's a sin. I. I'm not trying to show my scapular. [00:25:28] Speaker B: I know during podcasts you'll see me kind of go like this because I'm tucking it back in three times. Yeah. [00:25:33] Speaker A: You know, but there are ways that I. I can't evangelize. I'll tell you a beautiful story. So, see, I'll cry. You know, my James Lindsay is someone I love. I can't wait to see him again. And his obsession with conservatives crying on these podcasts is like, under Joe Rogan show. Whatever. Strange to me, but I'll probably cry when I tell the story. There was a young Yazidi woman who I love. She's my sister. I. When I met her in Iraq, I said, I'm your brother. Her whole family was. Almost her entire village was killed. Most of her family was killed. She was a slave of isis. The worst things happened to her. They left her for dead. They thought she was dead. The Peshmerga found her. And so when I met her, I said, listen, I'm your brother. Anything you would ask your father or your brother for, you ask me. And I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for them because they're. They're my friends. I mean, I've never met him, but I said, I'm doing this for them as a man. She ended up coming to the United States. She's in Nebraska. And so I never missed genocide. I was in Taiwan. I had to fly all the way from Taiwan to Nebraska, and I went to Yazidi Genocide Remembrance Day. The Yazidi are a small ethnic and religious community. And their ethnicity and religion, like in its original form, the religion, it had many sort of evolutions, but it's sort of like pre Abrahamic. And many people believe they're the proto Semitic people that Jews, Kurds and Muslims descend from them. That means Abraham came from them. But isis, because they're not strictly monotheistic, had no. The Quran, even to the most hardened Islamist, can't ignore Muhammad's statements on protecting Christians and Jews so they couldn't do every abuse they wanted to Christians and Jews. But to the Yazidis, they just did the worst, unspeakable things. And so I go to the Genocide Remembrance Day in August every year. And so we were there. So when I first met her and when I'm in Iraq, when I first met the Yazidis during the war, Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Middle east will not eat anything a Yazidi touches. Even Christians oftentimes, which is very sad because they said, I don't even want to say what they say about their religion, but their religion is different than our Abrahamic religions in many ways. So. So what I would do in Iraq is I would walk around eating off of everyone's plate. I'd say, you can eat that. Can I have that? Oh, and I'll give them some of my food. And I just dump my food on their plate. I would take food from. I'm going America. We call this family style. That was me evangelizing. That was me being Paul. Like, hey, I can eat your food. You can eat my food, right? And they would look shocked, and they would often say, you can't eat my food. I'm not clean. That they would say that they are not clean. I'd say, you're not clean. I'm more unclean than you. And, well, I was with her in Nebraska, and I took her to get a nice bag. I wanted to get her a nice bag. I said, pick out a bag. I took her to a nice store in the mall, and I said, I want to get my wife a bag. Pick out the most beautiful bag. She picked one out, and then I got it for her. And then we went to, like, olive tree. We went to the olive tree and we were eating, and she goes like this, brother, you have to try. And she. She gives me some of her food and she eats off of my plate. And I could tell you that was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. [00:28:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's power. [00:28:57] Speaker A: That was beautiful moments in my life. And that's the gospel of Jesus Christ. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:29:02] Speaker A: You know. [00:29:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're going to get back to Gaza here in a minute, obviously, because that's where most of people are talking about right now. But you're working in various African countries is like, how do you, you know, how do you find support for this for people to say, okay, there's these Christians in danger, like, aren't there? I guess actually, what I'm really trying to find out is I. I know of A lot of aid. I mean, there's been a lot of criticism of aid organizations, especially this year when Elon and his gang started uncovering, you know, what was going on. And I think a lot of us, I think rightly so, were kind of like, I don't want to give to these organizations that are basically, you know, teaching, like, transgender rights in Ukraine or something like that. So, like, what's going on, really, in these countries as far as, like, the aid? And how are you doing things differently than a lot of these bigger organizations? I'll name one. You don't have to, like, Catholic Relief Services or something like that. How are you different what you're doing in Africa and these other places? Compared to what we hear about in the news, that seems to be something I don't really want to give my money to. [00:30:18] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I will say, like, when I founded our organization, we. We have done aids. First aid was to Sudan? Actually, no. Our first aid program was into Romania in 2004. But we were always an influence operation. My goal is to run influence campaigns on behalf of stateless, vulnerable ethnic and religious communities facing genocide, democide, war, and working to protect the child in the womb and the vulnerable end of life. Like that was it, through influence. And to harness the power of the United States and the conservatives in America to be an instrument of leverage for communities facing genocide. Which sounds counterintuitive to everyone, but it wasn't to me because I thought, the people that will fight for the child in the womb will fight for the Yazidi in Iraq. And so that was the goal. And then we did get pulled into Sudan in 09 during the genocide and then into Iraq doing relief. But all the time, we were actually in Congress and working through media and Hollywood stars advocating for the interests. But I will say, since the fall of Afghanistan and the invasion of Ukraine, we have been heavily involved in relief efforts. And what I have discovered is where we work, we don't see much of anybody, really much of anybody. It's very sad to us Now, I always hope, like, there are parts of Gaza right now that are. It's easier for organizations to get bulk food deliveries to and things like this. But in those sort of red zones where there's starvation, we really. We do run into some sort of wild, smaller organizations, you know, like World Food Kitchen and groups like that that are just. I love those guys. Like, they're chefs tatted up, you know, in war zones. Like, they're just like, I worked in restaurants as a kid. They're those Guys, you know, right. That work till 4, 2 in the morning and drink till the sun rises type of guys, you know, and girls. And they're very brave, but sort of the larger NGOs. And so I've kind of come to understand this is why BPP has been growing every year is it gets, it gets tricky with like when Afghanistan fell. How are you, how are you removing people out of Afghanistan? You know, some of the things we did at the time were, I think that large organizations with compliance lawyers and would be risk averse and maybe they should be right. Maybe they should be. So I think we found our niche, you know, when Russia invaded Ukraine. And we never go anywhere unasked. That's something else. We've never. Everywhere we are, we were invited. We were invited by priests. These priests saw that we were securing girls schools in Afghanistan and said, why aren't you helping us secure our schools? No one asked. Then a priest from India said, hey, you're helping schools. These priests in Africa. Why aren't you helping the Dalit Catholics in India? So now we are, you know, some of our most famous sort of attention grabbing missions have been rescues and evacuations. We rescued someone last week from Gaza at the request of a very famous media personality. Very famous. I, I won't tell the story. I hope she tells the story because it was, it was quite, quite interesting. But you know, we were. Michael Hitchborn reached out to me two and a half years ago and said, there are these nuns trapped in. My friend supports this, these convent in Khartoum in Sudan. There are these nuns trapped there. And these military contractors said they'll rescue them for $3 million. I'm like, oh, we'll do it. And you know, we were able to get out the entire Convent and 800 other Christians for $60,000. [00:34:14] Speaker B: Wow. So how do you like. Okay, so how do you coordinate that? Like, you obviously need people on the ground there who have an. You're not sending a bunch of desk warriors, you know, to, to, to go rescue these people. These are people who obviously have skills in doing something like that. How do you have contacts? Like all of a sudden somebody says, I want you to, you know, help us in Ukraine or Afghanistan or India or wherever. How do you like, make the contacts on the ground to get the people who can, can, can do the services like security and rescue and things like that? [00:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's the conspiracy. A friend of mine used this expression last week. He called it the conspiracy of grace. I call it the Holy Spirit action plan. You know, when people ask me how I do something, I say, I write down what I'm going to do, and I figure out how to do it, and I do it with a pencil and a pad of paper. Okay, I have nuns trapped in Khartoum. Okay, what is it going to take to get them out of there? And I just start building it out. And I do have a lot of friends everywhere. I said to a buddy of mine, I go, I wish my wife would travel with me more. You know, I don't think she seems to have fun when she does, but she never wants to do it again every time. And my friend said, I traveled with you once. He goes, it's uncanny, Jason. It's. I go with you to Cairo, and you have a hundred friends that seem like they've known you for 30 years, and you have stories. Then I go to Rome and it's the same thing. And I go. I go, I don't. I'm like, who is this? Who is this guy? How I thought I knew him. Who are these people? He's like, how do you think your wife feels? And I said to my wife, I said, do you feel that way? She goes, I wouldn't have articulated that. I would have been able to put those into words, but that's exactly how it is. She goes, yeah, it is very unsettling that wherever we go on the street, people are like, hey, Jason. Or, you know. Or I was at the State Department with a friend of mine walking through, and she's like, how does everyone know you here at State? And in fact, I was called into D.C. when we were doing Afghan evacuations to meet with the State Department. And in quotes, state Department. And they wanted to know how I was doing, what I was doing. And I said, well, people think we're you, but it's God. And the truth is it's God. Like, I. I cannot begin to tell you. And how I explain it to people is. And I never want us to. I always tell my staff, people want to kind of exaggerate what we do, or they want to kind of make it hua. Like, you know, you know, we're not. You know, we're not. I say to people, think. Think of Rick's Cafe at Casablanca. That's what we are. We're Rick's Cafe, working on letters of transit and everything's logistics. In fact, we rescued a girl from Afghanistan using a letter of transit. If you know the. It's considered one of the greatest plot holes in Hollywood history that there would be a letter that you just Sew the Gestapo. And they're like, ah, you got a letter. Gotta let you go. Ah, those darn letters of transit. What's one to do? The rule of law and all, you know, And. And I thought to myself, we had a democracy activist who was slated for, you know, and we had to get her out of there, and we couldn't. No way we could do it. So I was like, why don't we have a friend that really liked us in the government there and was a good dude, actually, believe it or not. And we said to him, hey, can you just write a letter of transit? I talked about it like it was a real thing, you know, it's just a letter from you with your contact information on it saying, you give this, the holder of this letter permission to board a flight and leave, no questions asked. And it worked. I can tell you how scared I was when she was getting on that plane. Yeah, I was so scared. [00:37:51] Speaker B: And you just made it up, though, basically. [00:37:53] Speaker A: I mean, Casablanca. Yeah, yeah, right, Casablanca. So it worked. Yeah. And that's just kind of an example or like what happened with this last maybe 10 days ago when this media personality, you know, a hero of mine, member of her family called and said, could you help with this child whose skull is fractured, his eye sockets are shattered, his family's dead. I don't even know how they knew of this boy. And to get this boy out, it involved an Al Jazeera reporter, an Israeli government official, a US Senator, and some big shots in Jordan. And we. How did I know all of them? How did we knit it together? It was really just all miraculous. And this is kind of what happens every time. It kind of always comes together and it's strange. It's. It's uncanny. Yeah. [00:38:42] Speaker B: Now, I want to talk about Gaza some, because obviously that's what's in the news right now. And there's been a growing opposition to what Israel is doing there. However, especially, let's be blunt, in the crisis audience, there's still a very much support of Israel, but also what Israel is doing. And one of the number one things I always hear in response when I talk about the bad stuff going on in Gaza, when I bring it up, is they'll say, oh, you're just believing what Hamas is telling you, or you're just believing, you know, it's not true. You know, Israel is the most moral army ever. They're not doing anything. You know, maybe there's a few civilians who get killed accidentally, whatever the case may be. And it's like. And the truth is I just say, you know, that's not true, but, like, I don't have much more of an argument than they do. Like, we're both kind of just saying out here in America, you know, I'm right, you're wrong, but you've had. You have people there. And so what is it actually like in Gaza, particularly for the Christians? I don't know if you've worked with the patriarch, the Latin patriarch there or. Or like other Christians there, but, like, what is it actually like in Gaza now, based upon your own context there? [00:39:57] Speaker A: Yeah, well, the first thing I do is, you know, I have these two horrible devices to torture me, but the first thing I do when I wake up every morning is I check my signal messages from my Christian partners inside Gaza. It's the first thing I do every day. First thing. And I need to stop doing that because it's not good, you know, but I do that first thing I do. So, you know, and you would think that people would say, oh, Jason has people in Gaza, he's in direct communication with Gaza, then maybe we should listen to him. But they. They'll say, I don't know what I'm talking about. I've never been there. And I'm like, I've actually been there twice since January. Oh, then you must have been Propagand Brandeis while you were there. Hannah Iran talks about the cliches of genocide. She said that in her great sort of idea discovery while studying the. At the Eichmann trial is the banality of evil. The most people who advocate evil are not monsters. They're thoughtless. And thoughtlessness hides behind cliches. Human shields, tunnels under hospitals, Hamas steals aid. These are all thoughtless cliches. Like, and I'll take that, Hamas steals the aid. It's thoughtless. And I have to learn to be charitable. Not everyone spent their life studying and doing logistics, you know, operations in war zones. But when I hear people say Hamas is stealing the aid I get, I'm like, are you what? Yeah, Hamas steals aid, but. And so do all their gangs. And then there are. There are other thuggish rogue elements running around the war zone. Right. So of course. But just. I wrote it, I did an analysis on this, and if. No. So the IDF says they're stealing 75% of the aid. Okay. And there's no hunger. So if there's no hunger and they're stealing 25 of the aid, let's say everyone has 1800 calories. You have 2 million people eating 1800 calories. A day. And beyond that, they're stealing 25 of the 8. Okay, no, let's be more realistic. Let's say across Gaza, average daily caloric intake is a thousand calories. Some places it's 400, some places it's 2,000. But we'll just say it averages out a thousand. And let's say Hamas steals 25% of the calories. Okay, well, that would be 150 semi container trucks a month that Hamas would have to steal, guard, drive, hide. So they would make the underground economy in Gaza larger than Syria, Somalia and Sudan combined. Okay, it's not possible. It's just, I don't need to prove it to anyone because it's just not even possible. And then they're fighting one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world, backed by the United States and the United Kingdom, with drones and satellites. This just isn't happening. If it was happening, we would know. So that's just an example of sort of this thoughtlessness or, you know, two Christian women are shot in a courtyard stepping out of mass and by snipers and we're told that they were being used as human shields. This is absurd. Or when a 2,000 pound bomb falls on a church. By the way, Israel never says that. They never claim that. We have on our website footage of IDF snipers shooting holes in the water tanks at the only Catholic church in Gaza emptying the water tanks of water. Is that, is that an accident? Are they not, Are they not intentionally trying to ethnically cleanse? And then they say it, they say they're going to ethnically cleanse. They, they do it. I mean, look, ethnic cleansing isn't genocide. It's not mass murder necessarily. It could be, but when you say we're going to take 2 million people and send them to Libya or Sudan, and that's their great plan, we're going to send 2 million people to Libya. It's utterly insane. So I'm sitting here just kind of rocked at how thoughtless Art my friends are, people I've respected and I, and it's just, you know, Rene Girard says, when enthusiasms of violence sweep one's own community, we all have the same thought. I thought we were different. And yeah, it's been again, I say my job is a spiritual exercise. [00:44:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I think though, what you were saying about the cliches, that's what just gets me, is that I see Catholics who otherwise are good Catholics in so many ways, and they'll just repeat these cliches as a justification for Something is clearly immoral that we clearly can't support. Whether or not we're on Israel's side or whoever's side, whatever. You just doesn't mean you can support every act. You're required to support every action of theirs. And it's just like, like you said, human shields, whatever. And now a common one. I want you kind of to respond to this one. I think the most common one I hear is, well, Hamas could just release the hostages and it would all be over. So it's all Hamas's fault, really. You know, if they just released the hostages. [00:44:53] Speaker A: Yeah, you would have to believe that this began on October 7th. But it didn't. [00:44:59] Speaker B: Right there, there we go. [00:45:00] Speaker A: There are hundreds and hundreds of children, Palestinian children being detained without trial. We have. This is uncomfortable for people and for many of you, you're not even going to believe this because you're like, if this is true, I would have heard of it. There is video footage of IDF soldiers raping Palestinians, footage you can go to our website and see footage of Israeli soldiers smashing crucifixes, smashing statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary putting on Christian women's underwear in Gaza, dancing around their houses, writing pornographic and anti Christian slogans on their walls. This is what's happening. So you, you cannot deny it. You cannot deny it. Even Cardinal Pizza Ball and the Holy Father said that they believe that the attack on the church just a couple of weeks ago when a tank fired a shell at the cross was intentionally. They wanted to blow the cross off the church. And they killed three Catholics and wounded the parish priest. And I see our co religionists silent on this. And I hate bringing this up because Palestinians, by the way, are the most beautiful people. And we. I wrote an article called Help I'm an Anti Palestinian Bigot. And, and I wrote that article. I was in Egypt rescuing Christians from Gaza a year and a half ago, wounded pregnant women. And a friend said, you're going to be called anti Semitic for this. And I was like, I should write an article and analyze myself. And then I'm like trying to find it. And I'm like, I mean, my cousins are Jewish. And I mean, the first 16 times I was drunk as a middle junior high kid, was in my friend's bar mitzvahs, like, I what? No, I don't have. No. And then I was like, oh my gosh, you know what? Though I'm anti Palestinian, I am. I have deeply held prejudices against Arabs and Palestinians and Muslims. And I wrote about this. I just wanted to be honest about this, but just because I'm a bigot doesn't mean I have to advocate a genocide. And I should look to my faith and rise above my bigotry, which, tragically, that's what this genocide has done for me. It has rinsed me of my bigotry of Arabs and Palestinians. And now that I've gotten to know Palestinians, I was at an event with these bougie New Yorkers a couple weeks ago, Jewish and Palestinian together. And then I was there, kind of like, who let this guy in? And I was there, and I had said they were talking about conservatives supporting Palestinians. And I happened to be in the room, and I raised my hand. I go, I'm one of them. And then I just. I. I have kind of, like. I just say jokes when I shouldn't. I was even planning on saying this joke, but I was talking about how I used to be very prejudiced against Palestinians, and. And now that I've got to know you, I can't be prejudiced anymore. I can say with certainty you're all jerks, you know, because I know you. No, but the truth is, I love them. Like, I go to the West Bank. I feel much more at home in the west bank than I do in Israel. 100%. So much more at home, and it's so safe. And then you hear, charlie Kirk, you can't be a Christian. Walk around. I walk around the west bank like it's my neighborhood. All I see is kids riding bikes and kicking soccer balls and restaurants and cafes. What are you talking about? I walk through the Muslim district because I'll go to my Catholic church for Mass. The church. The Church of the Nativity, and then I'll walk to. To my friend who's a Lutheran pastor, the great Reverend Munther. I walked to meet him for coffee after his church, after he's done, and then. And I walk through the Muslim district, the Muslim quarter, nothing but smiles and high fives and. And I'm. You know, there's been no tourism for years. It's just. It's. It's wild. But here's the challenge. I think I'm being lost here, but I just want to pull back a little bit. It's all a mess. The Middle east is a mess. The borders are a mess. How the west and how Iran and how Turkey and how the Gulf states, you know, have used Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and Jordan and Israel and Palestine for its own purposes. And this goes back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Sykes Picot Agreement and All of the borders are absurd. We shouldn't change them, but we should just acknowledge they come with challenges. When you start changing borders, you're creating new challenges, new greed grievances. So I understand this is a very. Trust me, I've been studying and working there for 30 years. I understand it is very complex. And yet I think what isn't complex is we should acknowledge that as Catholics that are citizens of the most powerful country in the world, if I am to speak out or work to serve, it should be for the common good of the people that live there. But we have Christian Zionism with crazy ideas of apocalyptic wars and destructions of the Temple Mount and building of the Third Temple. I mean, this is wild stuff like that. Our ambassador to Israel believes and. But as a Catholic that works there. I just want to promote the common good and I want to protect the most vulnerable from violence. I have friends that almost were at the concert that was attacked. [00:50:16] Speaker B: Right. [00:50:17] Speaker A: And who lost friends. I have friends who are settlers in Bethlehem, and I have friends who are being beaten by settlers in Bethlehem. Can you believe? I have a friend from Hollywood who is a literal. And I adore this man. And he's been very good to me in my career. Kind and always says really nice things about me behind my back. Maybe not now anymore, maybe not anymore, but he used to. And I love him. And I have friends in Bethlehem now, Christians and Muslims that I love. And so what am I to do as a Catholic who's running an apostolate? I am simply going to promote the dignity and beauty and worth of everyone there. And I want to protect them from violence, and I want to make sure they're not starving. I want to make sure civilians aren't being targeted. And if you really care about Israel, you should start reading Israel's newspapers and seeing what Israelis are saying about this war. If you think this war is making Israel more secure, you are crazy. [00:51:15] Speaker B: Right? [00:51:16] Speaker A: Netanyahu is undermining the interests of not only the State of Israel, but Jews and around the world. And, And I, I got really lost there. But my main point was I don't, I didn't want. I don't, I don't like saying this because the Palestinians are an end of themselves. This is. Let me get right to my point. The Palestinians are an end in themselves in this ethnic cleansing. You can't deny it's that. I believe it's a genocide. We can debate that. It's a debate. But. But this ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is an end in itself. These Palestinians, this is Wrong. And we should stand up against it. But it is going to lead. And I tell my organization, we need to prepare for what's coming for Jews and Israelis. We need to prepare for that. And because the next 10, 20 years, there are going to be ideologues that try to harness for power and vengeance the tragedy that's happened in Gaza. And whenever I talk to Palestinians, this is also their concern. Can you believe that? [00:52:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:20] Speaker A: Every time I talk to a Palestinian, they really express concern that they don't want to see collective punishment to Jews or Israelis or for what the state is doing. And I go, how can you guys say this? They go, because we're the victims of collective punishment. [00:52:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's one of the biggest concerns I have with throwing out the anti Semitic, you know, label on people like you or like me who are just saying we're opposing what Israel is doing in Gaza right now doesn't make anti Semitic, is that it actually fosters actual anti Semitism. Because what it does is it does make it like, oh, we're not even allowed to criticize even the slightest policy decision of Benjamin Netanyahu. Well, now all of a sudden that jumps to, oh, look, the Jews do control everything. The Jews are the problem. We need to actually. Then, you know, and they become. The Jews are really running the world and we need to do something. Yeah. [00:53:16] Speaker A: You know what Trump said today? [00:53:17] Speaker B: No, I didn't hear Trump said to. [00:53:19] Speaker A: Aipac, you used to have total control of Congress, but you're losing it. [00:53:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I did see that. [00:53:25] Speaker A: I mean, it's wild. That's insane. [00:53:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, like, it just is. The fact is, is like, you're. I think that's a good point, that you're right that opposing Israel's. The government of Israel's actions now might be helping to save them later. Because what they're doing is just creating such a backlash against you because it's so obviously beyond reason. It's beyond morality. It's just, it's. It's evil. And eventually people are going to be like, they're going to be fed up and they're saying, okay, we can't just let this country do this, you know, forever now. What? [00:54:04] Speaker A: And Eric, I will say it is a tactic of mine. I will say sometimes I am a little more obnoxious than I would be. And the reason why I am is because I want to have credibility when the ball bounces. [00:54:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:16] Speaker A: And I've said this to my team, like, no, we have to turn it up for two reasons. One, I'm not stopping until this genocide stops. I'm not stop until there's a ceasefire. But at the same time, and you know, it's so, it's, you've, I've seen this with the Iraq war. It's amazing how quickly people change in a dime. Pretend they were never wrong and act like they were with you and it's just, they move along. So. But I just really want to make people, I want to make it clear to everyone where I'm standing on this. And I've been standing since October 18th year and two years ago now and but at the same time, we're the Vulnerable People project. And you know, the one thing that my work has taught me is it's such a grace and such a privilege is what a family we are again. When I was in Nebraska two weeks ago with the Yazidi, my friends drinking tea till the sun rose, I thought how much this is like when I'm in the Middle east with my Jewish and Muslim friends and how much this is just, just like when I'm with my own family. It might not be sitting on the floor drinking tea, but it's sitting on the porch drinking beer and eating, you know, boiled peanuts. But I'm like, we are really just a family. And that's one thing I've really gotten to understand. And Catholicism is a, is the religion with no other. But my, the work in my apostolate over 30 years has been just sort of this great spiritual exercise for me because I think just I am, you know, my nature is not the best. So for me it's been quite a grace to confront my own bigotry, my own prejudice, my own, you know, sort of violent defense of my own self interest and the self interest of my tribe, you know, so I'm grateful for that. And again, I'm grateful for our faith and I'm grateful like, you know, look, when I submit an article to you every time I'm like, oh, he's not going to put publish this, but I'll try, you know, and you do. And I know I'm like, and I think I always, usually when I forward it to, I'm like, fire in the hole or grenade. [00:56:14] Speaker B: It is funny because I know when I get an email from you that says submission, I'm like, okay, let's, let's roll. Let's wait for the attacks now. No, I, I, I want to continue to do it because I think you're absolutely right. We have to. It's like there's no point if you're not speaking up when everybody is on something. That's right. When everybody's against you, well then what's the point? I mean, everybody can do it. When everybody's, you know, like, like you said, like during the first days of COVID very few people, very few were getting arrested. Like you very people, people were speaking out against it. [00:56:46] Speaker A: Later. [00:56:47] Speaker B: A lot of people were like, oh yeah, I was against lockdowns and stuff like that. But you know, they really weren't, they weren't willing to speak out about it. So I think it is important and that's why crisis I like. Right. Writing your articles on these issues because it's important that we speak out now when we will get a lot of hate mail for it because later it does give us credibility and say, okay, you know, this is what we're trying to say. Please listen to us now. I want to though ask you a very specific question about what exactly is VPP doing in Gaza right now, like today? What, what are they involved in? [00:57:18] Speaker A: Okay. So initially we began doing evacuations of, you know, you'll hear a lot of people say, why don't we just move all the Christians? And we've, we've suggested this and we were off actually working on trying to bring the entire Christian community to the west bank, but that fell apart. But you know, why doesn't all the Palestinians move to Egypt? Nobody wants to participate in an ethnic cleansing and the Palestinians do not want to leave. And it was even very controversial and I was getting a lot of hate early on for taking Palestinians out of Gaza. But we were taking out women who were wounded, women who were pregnant with problem pregnancies. [00:57:57] Speaker B: Where were you taking them? [00:57:58] Speaker A: To neighboring countries. [00:58:00] Speaker B: Okay, neighboring companies were accepting them because I've heard that like the neighboring country, like Egypt and other in Saudi Arabia and place like that don't actually want the Palestinians to come. [00:58:09] Speaker A: Such and such a. This is the rate. I mean, the bigotry we hear about Palestinians. It's just kooky. The slogans. We're going to do a whole series addressing every cliche. But they're crazy. Like, why doesn't Egypt just take 2 million people? Why doesn't our country with a 27 trillion dollar economy want to take 500,000 immigrants across our southern border? Are you insane? Like, are you nuts? Like, you just want Egypt? Have you been to Egypt? Things aren't going well. You want them to take 2 million people, displaced people? Are you crazy? Why don't they just live where they are and stop bombing them but so we started out, you know, taking people to Egypt. [00:58:47] Speaker B: So you can take. Sometimes you can't take individuals, you know, in situations, too. [00:58:52] Speaker A: We were taking a lot of people until Israel bombed the Rafa gate. Yeah, they smashed the gate and then that, that ended. And even Egypt has said, we want to let aid in and we want to let people out. Not we don't want to participate in a mass ethnic cleansing, but we, you know, we want to serve the community. Now Egypt is very corrupt. You know, it's just trying to get aid in through Egypt isn't the best, Jordan's the best. But, you know, again, it's all about money. Israel's trying to make it now that all aid, once the war ends has to come through Israeli logistics companies, Israeli vendors. So groups like mine now are. Don't have the opportunity, you know, to have more vendors, more competition, trying to get the best price for the, you know, rice, all the things that we do to feed the most people with the. With our dollar. But that's what we started doing. But then I was there going to the region quite a bit, meeting with different logistics companies. We met a partner and they have just been great. This guy has become like a brother to me and I love this man and I love his company. And they become our partners and we contract them and they serve. They're our team on the ground. And I've been asking for permission to get into Gaza now for almost two years. I'm hoping that I'll be going to Gaza in the coming weeks. I want to go visit the churches personally, and I wanted to go and visit the camps and visit the orphans that we've been supporting. But now what we're really doing is we're really focused on aid and we provide hot meals every week to the churches. Every Christian in Gaza gets at least one hot meal for us. For our lady's birthday on September 8th, we're going to bring them cakes, birthday cakes. [01:00:33] Speaker B: Oh, nice. This is like holy family parish and places. [01:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And then the Orthodox church, we're going to bring a food with vegetables. Vegetables are very expensive. To put it in perspective. Onions have come down a bit, but a couple weeks ago, onions were more per ounce than gold. [01:00:48] Speaker B: Wow. [01:00:49] Speaker A: So. But to give them vegetables is a really special treat. We provide all of the water for all of the Christians in Gaza. Beyond that, you know, we had a truck mob for the first time. Gaza is the only place I haven't had aid stolen. I don't even call this theft. We did have a water truck heading to the church and the aid, the water truck was. People just stormed it. I don't want to say stormed it. They stopped the truck and they took about half the water and then it went to the church. And then we. And I said to my team, let's bring, you know, I think we ended up bringing five water trucks the next, like two days to that location. And we brought them water. You know, you don't have to. We'll bring you water. Just ask. And so now we're greatly expanding our water operations. A lot. Somebody posted on Facebook, Jason Jones said there was 500,000 people starving a month ago. Are they dead? They must not have been starving. And again, this is like how thoughtless people are. Do you think that's how starvation works? You can live on the edge of death for a very long time on a low calorie diet. You can go a month and a half without food, you know, so the reality is water is a necessity. So we've really. And we're a small organization and we don't have an endless budget even now. I just this morning approved the budget. I said to him, hey, just full disclosure, I don't have this money yet. Let's do the deliveries. I'm going into the jungle hunting, you know, I'm going out into the savannah with the spear, trying. And he goes, a brother, take as long as you want to pay the invoices. [01:02:23] Speaker B: So do you truck in the water from like, neighboring countries, like Jordan or something like that? How do you. How do you actually get it there? [01:02:31] Speaker A: You know, I don't want to say too much. After the war, we'll talk a lot about what we've done and how we've done it. But we had a warehouse bombed. I don't. [01:02:39] Speaker B: Right. [01:02:39] Speaker A: I'm not very trusting at this point. [01:02:41] Speaker B: I don't blame you. [01:02:42] Speaker A: I'll say that again. This is how we do it. I write on a piece of paper what we're going to do, and then we figure out a way to do it. And look, the baby formula has taken us months and months and months to do. Now we're delivering baby formula even after we lost our warehouse. It's not as much as we'd wanted to do, obviously. We lost 5,000 cans, but we're continuing to distribute baby formula. And at the end of the day, I think all we really do. Again, I have, like, imposter syndrome. I don't want people here to think we're feeding Gaza. We're not. We're doing tens of thousands of meals and Thousands and tens of thousands of liters of water. And we're doing really fun things. I don't know if you saw the video I sent you. We did a kids day for the orphans. [01:03:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:03:25] Speaker A: We brought in clowns and we brought in music, and we brought in shave ice. It's something really cheap and easy to do, and it gives them hope. We want them to know they're loved. We want them to be children, and we want to remind them that they're children. Right now, I'm sourcing ice cream trucks for when the war ends in Jordan, and my plan is to lead the first truck in. And I want to invade Gaza with ice cream trucks playing 80s new wave. Like, if you listen, if you read in my book, I want to make you guys happy. At crisis. I have an. I wrote. I was blessed to write the obituary for Breitbart.com on 8, Andrew Breitbart, the greatest privileges of my life. And I wrote about our friendship. And I don't know if I mentioned it in there, but I tell the story of Andrew Breitbart and I on the set of Atlas Shrugged. And what we talked about, which was really a beautiful day, it was Andrew, my daughter and I, we had cameos as the mayor's aides and. And. But Andrew and I never talked about politics ever. We talked about God, baseball and new wave punk and rock. And. And so we're gonna play new wave rock and have ice cream trucks. But what we're gonna do now is, my team, these guys are really heroes. They've been able to get bicycles and things, and they're assembling, like, tricycles, big trikes, and they're gonna put ice cream boxes on the front, little coolers on the front, and then they're gonna dress up as clowns, or they get these little animal things and they're going to ride around the camps giving the kids, you know, ices, which is basically just ice color and flavor and sugar, but, you know, sugar is actually really good for them. So, yeah, it's, you know, it's symbolic, but it means a lot to the. I don't want to under. I don't want to underestimate the. The people we're serving. [01:05:14] Speaker B: Right. [01:05:14] Speaker A: But what is the quote about? All of our sins are. Eduardo always quotes this. To me, all of the sins of the human family are nothing but a drop in the ocean of God's mercy. And I would say all of our aid, tragically, into Gaza is simply a drop into an ocean of suffering. But it's a privilege for us to be that drop. [01:05:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Amen. Now if somebody's been listening to us, to us talk for this long, I'm hoping they're open to maybe donating to vulnerability. Vulnerable people project the big concern. I, I, I always have like I'm, I'm very strict about who I give money to because I very much want to be a good steward and I think a lot of people are and they see organizations, big organizations and they're like, am I just giving my, it's going to help some bloated bureaucrats salary or you know, or just like, you know, keep the, the machine running without actually helping? I, because that's a big struggle if. [01:06:11] Speaker A: You'Re, I wish that was the case. I wish, I wish like it's an American. [01:06:17] Speaker B: We're sitting here and like how can I get my money from me to an actual individual in Gaza that won't get about 90, you know, a dollar to him and won't get 97 cents of it taken away first and he gets 3 cents of it. How do I get least? I mean obviously there is expenses. You have to pay people. All that stuff is, you know, know, part of being a nonprofit. But can you kind of describe in general like the donate, like how VPP works and, and as far as like do you have this, do you have a blood democracy, bureaucracy? Jason? [01:06:54] Speaker A: No, I think if I did they would, the first thing they would do is fire me. So we can't have that. No. So you know, this was, I worked, I don't, I worked for very large pro life organizations when I came out of graduate school and they believe in those days they were very bloated. I mean I worked for one organization, we had 66 employees. And I can tell you now my organization has three Americans that work for us. We're built, we have contractors though. We're built on a special forces AT model. That's how I designed it from the very beginning that we would have a core group of competency in our in house team. And then we, with the communities that we serve, we knit together our team. So for example, our vulnerable parish program in Nigeria, we have a priest that's our country director. We give that priest a $250 stipend to run a country and he loves it because he gets to get aid and security to all these vulnerable parishes. And it's funny, in another country, Malawi yesterday I got the country director, the priest and, and where there is the church, our country directors are priests from there that live there and Our country director in Malawi was like, they all do this. He said, look what I've done with your stipend that you sent for me every month. And he built a huge, like, massive garden outside of his church for his community. We had another priest that saved his stipend up for 18 months, and he built an addition onto his parish. He built a parish hall with a stipend. [01:08:29] Speaker B: Wow. [01:08:29] Speaker A: And so, you know, the men that guard our Catholic parishes are Catholic men. So we're also creating jobs. And. And tragically, it's not. We don't pay them a lot. It's like 100 bucks a month or something like that, you know, are. We have 13 employees that work for us in Kabul that do our work there. One of our biggest programs every year is we do something called Coal for Christmas, where we distribute thousands of tons of coal and food to the widows and orphans of the men who died fighting for the United States, the Afghan partners. And now their women and children, their wives and children are starving. So, you know, that my whole. My whole cobble team cost me 1200amonth. So not only are those men heroic, doing the most amazing activities serving the Christian, you know, rescuing Christians and minorities and delivering aid and. But their families are surviving and thriving. So I really look at even our hires, like, even our staff structure. You know, for example, the Jewish community that we serve in Africa. These are poor, poor African Jewish communities, really, that have been there since, you know, they lost into the annals of history. And we. We employ and we train their. Their people. This fall, we're going there with former FBI agents and former Green Berets to. To improve their training. So. But, yeah, It's. It's. So no. 93% of every dollar goes to direct aid. There have been years where my accountant's like, we need to fudge our numbers because it doesn't look believable. And you asked me, Eric, how many employees I have. I think the one problem we have that people who don't understand our model, they probably. When they go look at our 990 and see what a small organization we are and what a small budget we are have. They have to be like, they're not doing what they say, right? There's just no way. And people have said that to me, I saw your 990. You're not doing that. How could you do that? I. I get. I hear that a lot. And then I have to explain them to our model. And that's one reason, like, we're pretty meticulous at documenting every single thing we do. So you go to our website, you'll see all of our aid deliveries, you'll see us handling out meals, you'll see testimonies of the people we've rescued or people who've asked us to rescue family members and friends. But that's just an example. Like when we rescued the nuns, we did it for $60,000. You know, these military contractor companies were going to just get the religious order for 3 million. We got the order and 800 Christians out for 60,000. So we do things that people can't believe it at the cost, you know. [01:11:11] Speaker B: Right. [01:11:12] Speaker A: I, my, all my team in Gaza are volunteers. They're Christians in Gaza or contractors that work for our logistics company. That's it. [01:11:21] Speaker B: I, I tell my wife, I hate talking to you because then I end up, you know, wanting to give all my money away. And so it's like, you know, it's, it's not good. Probably is good for me. I, I have a funny story for you though. So my wife and I, you know, when we have something comes up and, and you know, crosses our path that we may think, hey, this might be good charity. Some, some good cause we want to give to. We always check with the other one, like, hey, is it okay? You know, does it sound good? Because we want to make sure, you know, we stay within our budget, what we can give that month, whatever. But it was funny, you guys sent out something, I guess it was a month or two ago about, I think it was the water tanks in Gaza, something like that. And I immediately gave and I came up to my wife and I said, oh, hey, I, I should have checked with you first, but I gave to this. She's like, oh, I did too. [01:12:07] Speaker A: Do I need to give you a refund? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. So it was just funny because we. [01:12:12] Speaker B: Both, we gave a double because it's like we didn't. [01:12:14] Speaker A: We. [01:12:15] Speaker B: Neither of us even waited to tell the other one. We both ended up. And so it was just kind of a funny thing. So happy to do it, of course, but it, I just kind of chug with that because we always check with each other first, but we didn't that time and we end up doubling it up. [01:12:26] Speaker A: So you know what? I, I do check and I look at our donations. I'm kind of obsessive because I write checks my organization cannot cash. A lot of times, you know, I tell my logistics partners, hey, we're going on faith here. And God always comes through. I mean, never has not. But. And I don't actually even get nervous anymore. But I always want to be fair to my logistics partner. Like, I just approved the. The Christians. I said, give us your dream budget for what you need, you know, and the longer the war goes on, the more their morale is beaten down, the more I want to do for them, just to lift their spirits. And so I. I said, let's kind of up what we've been doing. Like, let's do the vegetables. The vegetables are very expensive. And I told him in full disclosure, it's not. I don't have it yet. And. But I'll go get it. And. But I check. I'm always refreshing. How did today's email do? And when I see your name or your wife's name and my friend's name, I'm really overwhelmed with gratitude. And I'll say again. And that's like this imposter syndrome. Like, I hate when people thank me for what I do, because it's really. I tell our team, our American team, we're just the concierge desk of the Ritz Carlton or the Trump Hotel, because if you ever were in the Trump hotel in D.C. the customers, the hospitality was like nothing you've ever seen, right? So we really try to treat the people we serve with. With that kind of hospitality. They can't always express gratitude. They're not always gracious because they're suffering. And maybe they feel like our country, in a way, is participating in the cause of their suffering, but we're always having to be kind and forgiving and generous and gracious. How can we help? Yes, sir. No, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you, ma'. Am. So we're the concierge desk. I see. Our donors own the hotel, and the people we serve are our guests. And so at the end of the day, the role I play is simply the concierge desk. And when work gets overwhelming, sometimes I say to my staff, that's it. I'm going to Jamaica. I'm going to be a cabana boy at a Sandals Resort. Like, what? Working the concierge desk isn't good enough for you? You know? [01:14:38] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to. Let's wrap it up there. But I just want a couple things I want to mention first. I'm going to put links to the book. First of all, dispatches from the great campaign. Great book. Obviously, like I said, Crisis publications right there. So get the book to learn more about what Jason's doing. But go to Vulnerable People Project the website. I will put a link to that as well. You can really find more details. There's great videos of what they're doing. You can obviously donate there. I encourage you to do that. Anything you can give. And I think, if I remember correctly, you can donate and kind of earmark it towards. I really want to give to the Gaza project or the Nigeria project. Isn't that right? Can't. You kind of can. [01:15:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And you can. You can definitely do that. And you can pick where you want to donate to. And I just want to say on the book, and I'm really grateful that you allowed me to publish this book with you. It's a real privilege. And. But it's not just war. It's like you're going from Hollywood sets. Yeah. To college campus to Hollywood sets, to war. I talk about Steve Bannon, my, you know, my friendship with Steve Bannon going back 20 years. Andrew Breitbart, so you get a glimpse. [01:15:43] Speaker B: And it's very eclectic in the sense. And I mean that in the good way of, like, it really does go. It's. It's very diverse in all the things that it covers. So it's great. So. Yeah, well, it's great. So, anyway, like I said, I'll put a link to both those. The Vulnerable People Project and to the book on. On the show notes, so. Well, thanks for being with us, Jason. [01:16:01] Speaker A: Thank you, brother. Thanks for having me. [01:16:03] Speaker B: Yep. Okay. Until next time, everybody. God love. [01:16:09] Speaker A: Sam.