The John-Henry Westen Show - August 30, 2022


The shame of America： Biden's abomination in Afghanistan lives on

Topics
LifeFunder and evacuations
Hosted by
John-Henry Westen
Mentioned
Jason Jones Joe Biden Prince Wafa Deirdre Byrne Chris Smith Jennifer Cadena Jesus Christ Sister Byrne John Candy Abbey Gate Austin
Canadian professor： I was fired for saying healthy children don't need COVID jabs 'Mass of the Ages' trilogy aims to show Francis who traditional Catholics really are

Episode Stats


Length

29 minutes

Words per minute

166.33

Word count

4,886

Sentence count

331

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On August 17th, 2011, Jason Jones stepped up to the plate and did something that no one else would dare to do: rescue a woman trapped in the Taliban's clutches in Afghanistan. In the process, he became a hero. And now, a year later, we re celebrating the anniversary of that day.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thanks to LifeFunder, we were able to keep 30,000 people alive through the winter with
00:00:06.760 their only source of food and heat was the Vulnerable People Project.
00:00:11.700 And these were Christians and other minorities that were extremely vulnerable.
00:00:14.740 If Biden would have said in early July that it's not looking good and we need all American
00:00:20.720 citizens to get out of the country now, how many lives, how many American lives would 0.97
00:00:25.340 have been saved?
00:00:26.120 Anybody who was at the LifeSite Gala on August 17th would remember one of the stars of the
00:00:35.220 show really was Jason Jones.
00:00:36.800 Well, Jason Jones is here with us again today.
00:00:39.380 And the reason why is very special because, do you remember, it was a year ago now that
00:00:45.660 the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving allies and even U.S. citizens in lurch, unable
00:00:53.560 to get out, scared for their lives and rightfully so.
00:00:57.040 And someone stepped up.
00:00:58.720 His name was Jason Jones.
00:01:00.380 And he did so with the help of so many of you fans of LifeSite News because we ran something
00:01:06.340 called a LifeFunder for him.
00:01:08.040 You know that we have this platform, this GoFundMe alternative called LifeFunder that
00:01:12.300 you can get to at LifeFunder.com.
00:01:14.000 Well, I think originally Jason thought it might be a little bit of a help, but you guys came
00:01:18.960 through in spades.
00:01:19.660 There was over half a million dollars raised.
00:01:21.640 And you know what?
00:01:23.400 Jason's still doing this work and we need to help him some more.
00:01:27.980 So at LifeFunder.com, you can help at LifeFunder.com slash extra mile.
00:01:32.400 You can still help to help Jason Jones in this effort.
00:01:37.460 We're going to hear from him now.
00:01:38.820 Stay tuned.
00:01:58.180 Jason Jones, so good to be with you.
00:01:59.780 John Henry, great to be with you, brother.
00:02:02.560 What an awesome thing you did for us at the gala.
00:02:05.020 There are people raving about it all over the place.
00:02:07.700 But before we get into all of that, let's begin as we always do with the sign of the
00:02:10.860 cross.
00:02:12.220 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
00:02:17.560 Amen.
00:02:17.860 It was great to see you in person here.
00:02:19.840 I'm seeing you on the screen.
00:02:21.340 But boy, to finally get to embrace you after more than two and a half years of being away,
00:02:29.920 that's really quite something.
00:02:32.080 Yeah, I was excited.
00:02:33.240 You made it across the border.
00:02:34.240 I did send John Candy and a crew to go try to stop you, but somehow you evaded them.
00:02:39.540 Tell us, Jason.
00:02:40.320 We're experiencing an anniversary right now, not a good anniversary, but an anniversary
00:02:45.420 of something that launched you into almost like a new life.
00:02:50.200 Tell us what happened and what we're remembering right now.
00:02:53.360 Yeah, John Henry.
00:02:54.020 Well, thank you for having me on.
00:02:55.180 And it's a privilege to be able to talk to your folks because it was LifeSite News,
00:02:58.840 LifeFunder, and your donors that really stepped up.
00:03:01.540 That was a game changer for us.
00:03:03.700 In early August of last year, in this very office, my home office, you can see behind
00:03:09.140 me, I was battling with COVID pneumonia, laying on my couch, and I got a phone message from
00:03:16.400 a friend of mine who was actually an actress, Jennifer Cadena, who's the co-founder of Movie
00:03:21.860 to Movement with me.
00:03:23.340 And she had asked if I could help rescue her friend's mother-in-law.
00:03:27.100 Her friend and her husband, her friend's husband, made an anti-Taliban documentary.
00:03:32.740 She's a Catholic American.
00:03:34.020 He's Afghan.
00:03:35.920 And they made an anti-Taliban documentary.
00:03:38.140 So as they saw Afghanistan beginning to fall, and as the Taliban was getting closer and closer
00:03:43.340 to Kabul, she asked if I could help rescue her friend's mother.
00:03:48.000 And so I set out to try to find a path out for my friend's mom.
00:03:54.060 And but by the end of that first day, in early August of last year, I had about 12 more phone
00:03:59.520 calls, a Marine captain, some Christian pastors, and others.
00:04:03.700 And so I just tried to build out a plan, leveraging my relationships in the U.S.
00:04:08.780 government and for some and in other large nonprofits to find seats on planes for these
00:04:13.300 folks.
00:04:13.780 But by the end of the first week, word had spread that I was successfully getting folks
00:04:18.620 out.
00:04:19.540 And just me on this couch behind me in this laptop, I'd fielded over a thousand requests
00:04:25.200 from pastors, from Army Green Berets, from Marines, folks just trying to get out their
00:04:31.940 interpreters or Christian leaders and their families and others.
00:04:35.600 And it really began to become what I thought was going to be a very simple project of not
00:04:44.120 simple, but a small, just a project of getting out a few friends or friends of a few friends.
00:04:52.340 It blew up into really what became a new full time part, you know, mission for my organization
00:04:59.540 at the Vulnerable People Project.
00:05:00.820 What we do traditionally, as you know, is we run influence campaigns to defend the vulnerable
00:05:06.060 from genocide, war, defending the child in the womb.
00:05:11.100 We run influence campaigns using celebrities or politicians or media, getting legislation
00:05:16.160 introduced, trying to form policy, but sort of doing direct evacuations from a country that's
00:05:23.320 in collapse was new to us.
00:05:25.600 But why I am so grateful to talk to your audience is somebody from your team contacts
00:05:30.680 me.
00:05:31.740 And honestly, I was a bit annoyed.
00:05:33.320 I was, they were like, hey, we're putting together a life funder for you.
00:05:36.260 I didn't know what that was.
00:05:37.760 And can you look at something?
00:05:39.200 And I was, I hadn't slept in days.
00:05:41.360 I was stressed out and overwhelmed.
00:05:43.960 And I felt like the last thing I needed right now was a chore.
00:05:47.420 I had all the tasks in the world in front of me.
00:05:52.100 But I looked at the life funder.
00:05:54.620 They said, I said, oh, wow, this is great.
00:05:56.360 And I thought, oh, this could maybe raise us a couple of thousand dollars and this will
00:06:00.060 be a nice help.
00:06:01.680 But as Afghanistan continued to collapse and I was focused on building out overland routes
00:06:07.740 to get Christian leaders and their families and others out of Afghanistan as the airport
00:06:12.280 became inaccessible and then eventually closed.
00:06:16.200 In just a matter of a few weeks, I didn't even look over at the life funder.
00:06:20.300 And it raised over a half of a million dollars.
00:06:23.760 And what this allowed us to do is when a lot of these large groups that got a lot of
00:06:29.360 publicity, we weren't seeking publicity.
00:06:31.140 We were being very quiet about what we were doing.
00:06:34.460 And we were building overland routes into all of the neighboring countries just to keep
00:06:38.880 people alive and get them out as soon as possible.
00:06:41.700 A lot of folks we couldn't get out.
00:06:43.060 A lot of pastors were captured and killed.
00:06:45.160 A lot of interpreters were captured, beheaded, hung.
00:06:48.560 It was very quite sorrowful.
00:06:49.660 A lot of people on our list before we could evacuate them were murdered.
00:06:54.020 But what had happened is thanks to LifeFunder, we were leveraging our relationships with big
00:07:00.300 organizations and with government agencies and getting our folks onto other people's planes.
00:07:07.720 But what LifeFunder allowed us to do now was to really build an underground railroad.
00:07:12.540 And as winter approached and the railroad was sort of our routes were becoming very dangerous
00:07:19.560 and very expensive, we decided to cease evacuations to the winter and to begin to feed these Christian
00:07:27.360 communities that were being starved out.
00:07:29.080 These minority communities like the Hazara were having food directed away from them. 0.99
00:07:33.100 The UN had predicted over a million deaths last winter.
00:07:35.800 But thanks to LifeFunder, we were able to keep 30,000 people alive through the winter with it.
00:07:43.920 Their only source of food and heat was the Vulnerable People Project.
00:07:48.520 And these were Christians and other minorities that were extremely vulnerable.
00:07:51.540 This also included American citizens that were in hiding.
00:07:55.960 We were able to get the last American citizens on our list out shortly before Christmas.
00:08:02.000 The funds to do that had also come from LifeFunder.
00:08:05.500 So, you know, we're a very small organization.
00:08:08.340 We have me and three other folks.
00:08:10.240 And so 100% of the funds that came in from LifeFunder went directly to mission.
00:08:15.440 We also don't use Western organizations.
00:08:17.980 We don't ship food.
00:08:18.940 We were locally sourcing our food from neighboring countries.
00:08:22.340 We were partnering with Afghan anti-Taliban tribes and communities to facilitate our evacuations
00:08:28.480 and food distribution.
00:08:29.460 So there was no cost there.
00:08:31.200 So our little organization together with LifeFunder, we probably distributed more food than the World
00:08:37.460 Food Program in Afghanistan last winter.
00:08:39.420 And as far as we can see, we're really the only organization that never had our evacuation
00:08:45.460 and resettlements completely stopped.
00:08:47.520 If there was an SIV, and that's an Afghan who was vulnerable because they fought alongside 0.97
00:08:51.440 the United States, so their special immigrant visa qualified.
00:08:55.760 When we had SIVs that were in imminent danger, at no point were we ever not able to evacuate 1.00
00:09:01.460 them.
00:09:02.480 There were months where we completely bankrupted our organization.
00:09:05.780 You know, a lot of these big groups with lots of funds.
00:09:08.120 They thought we had tens of millions of dollars because they saw the impact that we had on
00:09:13.320 the ground.
00:09:14.300 But it was because we're a very lean organization.
00:09:16.940 All of our work in Afghanistan was facilitated by Afghan partners.
00:09:21.060 And we had no fundraising costs.
00:09:23.500 All this funds was raised really by the grace of LifeSite News, LifeFunder, and your donors.
00:09:29.360 We're very, very proud to have helped you do what you do.
00:09:35.280 But your job there is not finished yet.
00:09:37.940 Tell us what you're doing now and what the needs are now.
00:09:41.840 You know, I was thinking what our Lord told us is if someone compels you to go a mile with
00:09:45.700 them, and I really love that the word is compelled.
00:09:48.180 Someone compels you, not asks you, not suggests, not cajoles, compels you to go a mile with them.
00:09:53.500 Go an extra mile.
00:09:55.760 The Vulnerable People Project felt compelled to rescue people who were made vulnerable because
00:10:01.880 of they were my co-religionists, they were fellow Christians, or because they fought shoulder
00:10:07.720 to shoulder with Americans in the war on terror.
00:10:10.200 I felt that I had no choice, that I had to do all I could to rescue them in the fact that
00:10:16.960 we were compelled to serve them.
00:10:18.240 We thought it would be simple, get them across the border, and then we were done.
00:10:22.600 But of course, to be a Christian in Pakistan isn't much better than being a Christian in 0.95
00:10:26.820 Afghanistan.
00:10:27.920 And so we have to find permanent resettlement.
00:10:31.040 We have to find countries to permanently resettle them. 1.00
00:10:34.740 So we're calling phase two this year, extra mile.
00:10:38.200 We felt compelled to go one mile last year, and we're going to go the extra mile.
00:10:43.180 One of the things that I personally said to every Afghan that contacted our organization,
00:10:49.220 whether it be a Christian, a Hazara, or an SIV who was made vulnerable for their service
00:10:54.780 to the United States, I told them that they were going to be okay and that we would be
00:10:59.580 with them until they are safe.
00:11:01.780 And I said that because that's what I learned in the Army.
00:11:04.600 As an infantryman, when you come across a wounded soldier, a wounded buddy, a cohort, you
00:11:09.640 put your hand on their shoulders, you comfort them, and you tell them they're going to be
00:11:12.920 okay.
00:11:14.640 And so that's all I could think to say.
00:11:16.740 It's just, you're going to be okay.
00:11:18.480 And we were telling this to people, John Henry, as I'm talking to them, people around them
00:11:23.640 are being shot.
00:11:25.280 Family members have been captured and hung.
00:11:27.900 And we're telling them they're going to be okay.
00:11:30.520 And I'm glad I said that because I feel like that was a contract.
00:11:34.980 I'm now obligated to be with them until they are safe.
00:11:39.200 And so we're not going to quit.
00:11:41.000 It's very expensive to resettle one immigrant because the United States is not keeping its 1.00
00:11:45.300 commitment to SIVs.
00:11:46.940 So now we're working with other countries.
00:11:48.940 In fact, our diplomatic liaison, we're opening up an office in Rome because we found that
00:11:54.600 countries in Europe have been better partners in resettling these Afghans who are made vulnerable
00:11:59.300 by their service to the United States or because they're Christians than our government 0.59
00:12:02.680 has been.
00:12:03.180 So we're moving our office from D.C. to Rome.
00:12:07.600 But it's $50,000 over 18 months to resettle a refugee.
00:12:13.260 We have hundreds of SIVs in safe houses across Afghanistan and Pakistan.
00:12:18.540 That comes at a great cost.
00:12:21.740 And as you can imagine, it's very challenging for them.
00:12:23.880 And mentally and emotionally and spiritually, it's becoming very hard for them after now a
00:12:27.560 year in hiding.
00:12:29.180 And then we have the brutal winter that's going to be bearing down upon us with food shortages
00:12:34.840 across the globe for many reasons.
00:12:37.500 And those Afghan Christians and Hazaras are looking at famine. 0.99
00:12:43.780 Right now, 95% of Afghanistan is in hunger.
00:12:46.820 Right now, this summer, already in the summer, 50% of Afghanistan is facing severe hunger.
00:12:54.720 So we're anticipating millions of Afghans dying this winter.
00:13:00.160 And it's quite sorrowful, John Henry.
00:13:02.080 One of the things that we discovered, we built this ship at sea.
00:13:05.180 We discovered that not only do we have to rescue those SIVs, those Afghan soldiers who fought
00:13:11.940 shoulder to shoulder with our men and women in uniform, but that there are a million orphans
00:13:17.120 in Afghanistan right now.
00:13:18.900 So many of the families we're supporting in Afghanistan were orphaned because the fathers
00:13:24.260 and husbands, so many widows and orphans in Afghanistan right now because of the way we left
00:13:29.280 Afghanistan.
00:13:29.900 So many of the police officers and the Afghan police officers and soldiers were captured
00:13:35.960 and murdered.
00:13:37.240 And now their children and their wives are starving to death.
00:13:41.820 And last year, as this was all unfolding, one Bible verse kept ringing in my head,
00:13:46.260 remember the friends of your father.
00:13:48.480 And I just thought that these were our friends.
00:13:51.540 These were the friends of our fathers.
00:13:53.280 These were the friends that fought the worst terrorists in the world with us.
00:13:57.800 And, you know, as a former infantryman, the Ranger Creed, my favorite stanza is never will
00:14:04.100 I leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.
00:14:07.900 And under no circumstances will I embarrass my country.
00:14:11.240 Well, last year, Joe Biden embarrassed our country.
00:14:14.240 He abandoned our cohorts, our allies.
00:14:18.240 He abandoned them to our enemy.
00:14:20.800 And now their children and their wives are starving to death.
00:14:23.660 What you just said is very powerful.
00:14:25.700 And it wasn't an abandonment that was what might have been pre-planned.
00:14:31.160 But he swore up and down, did he not, that he wouldn't do that.
00:14:34.680 In fact, we're going to play a couple of those clips right now.
00:14:37.020 This is Joe Biden promising to do the right thing.
00:14:39.920 Mr. President, do you trust the Taliban, Mr. President? 0.87
00:14:45.140 Mr. President, why can't you evacuate?
00:14:47.280 Is the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?
00:14:51.120 No, it is not.
00:14:53.160 Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.
00:14:58.540 That is not true.
00:14:59.960 Can you please clarify what they have told you about whether that will happen or not?
00:15:04.440 That is not true.
00:15:05.300 If I can just get you to comment on that, because those were promises made and obviously promises
00:15:12.320 broken.
00:15:13.240 But what was your takeaway?
00:15:15.300 Well, those words got people killed.
00:15:17.300 And I'm going to tell you Joe Biden was lying.
00:15:19.620 Because the first time he went on television and said, Afghanistan will not fall to the Taliban.
00:15:24.800 The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army.
00:15:27.380 We will not see helicopters on roofs.
00:15:29.180 You know, and then within five weeks of those statements, there were helicopters on roofs and
00:15:34.920 Afghanistan collapsed overnight.
00:15:37.500 When Biden said that the first time in July 7th, 85% of Afghanistan's districts had already
00:15:44.240 fallen.
00:15:45.860 It was over.
00:15:47.480 I have talked to special forces soldiers who told me that in July, they were already doing
00:15:52.560 joint patrols with the Taliban and handing the country over.
00:15:55.960 This is what I was told by special forces soldiers, active duty Green Berets.
00:16:02.400 And so they knew in July, the game was over, that Afghanistan was going to be handed over
00:16:07.480 to the Taliban.
00:16:08.580 So when Biden said that, you know, the problem is not only that we didn't get American citizens
00:16:14.340 out.
00:16:14.740 I mean, I'm sure there are still American citizens there in hiding.
00:16:17.520 There were hundreds to thousands of U.S. citizens there.
00:16:24.740 We can't ever get a real number.
00:16:26.040 I heard as high as 10,000.
00:16:28.260 We had Americans on our list until Christmas, around Christmastime, in country, in hiding. 0.77
00:16:34.140 A lot of them wouldn't leave.
00:16:35.440 In August, there were family members asking us to rescue their family.
00:16:39.180 And their family would tell us, American citizens would tell us, Biden said Afghanistan is not
00:16:45.820 going to fall.
00:16:46.700 And we're like, it's falling.
00:16:48.460 Within days of those calls, many of the people we lost, we can never communicate with again.
00:16:52.980 For all we know, they were killed.
00:16:54.940 So if Biden would have said in early July that it's not looking good and we need all American
00:17:00.980 citizens to get out of the country now, how many lives, how many American lives would 0.97
00:17:05.600 have been saved?
00:17:06.940 How many SIVs would have been saved?
00:17:08.860 But it's the opposite, actually.
00:17:11.000 Our Afghan ground director who runs our ground operations, Prince Wafa, was an American citizen
00:17:16.920 who didn't get home from Afghanistan until in December.
00:17:21.000 Prince Wafa had to sneak into the country to rescue his own wife because the State Department
00:17:26.700 wasn't processing her visas.
00:17:28.200 She couldn't even get in a meeting at the embassy.
00:17:31.000 And so he wasn't going to let his wife die.
00:17:33.700 Prince Wafa snuck into the country on August 15th.
00:17:37.500 He grew out his beard, snuck in the country, went to get his wife, ended up being stuck
00:17:41.780 there, saw me on EWTN News Nightly, reached out to me, and then our organization was able
00:17:47.460 to partner with him to facilitate his evacuation and get him back to the United States with
00:17:51.860 his wife.
00:17:52.440 So when Biden lied, what he did is he let steam out of the kettle.
00:17:59.660 So a lot of Americans and a lot of the SIVs didn't recognize how important it was that
00:18:05.600 they would get out of the country.
00:18:06.740 And so we saw the catastrophe at the airport.
00:18:09.520 So on August 26th of last year, a bomb blast went off at Abbey Gate that killed 13 Americans,
00:18:15.700 12 Marines, and one Navy corpsman, and also 170 Afghans killed and countless wounded.
00:18:21.560 We know John Henry now about the bomb at Abbey Gate.
00:18:24.460 I was really hesitant to tell this something, but I've been saying it.
00:18:27.820 I just thought it wasn't prudent for me to share this with the media.
00:18:30.320 I was told on August 25th to get everyone away from the Abbey Gate, there was a terrorist
00:18:35.400 attack that was imminent.
00:18:37.020 And so we were able to get some folks away from that gate, including an interpreter with
00:18:42.620 his pregnant wife and their three-year-old child, hours before the bomb blast went off.
00:18:48.260 Well, I always wondered how our friends had this information about Abbey Gate.
00:18:52.940 Well, now we know.
00:18:53.920 The CIA had told the Marines to watch this terrorist, said that there was this terrorist,
00:19:01.840 don't apprehend him, just observe him.
00:19:04.460 And for 72 hours at least before the bomb went off, they had eyes on this guy.
00:19:10.260 So the CIA was aware of the terrorist that ended up detonating the bomb, and they killed
00:19:15.560 13 Americans and 170 Afghans.
00:19:18.560 You couldn't imagine a withdrawal from a country that was more disgraceful, more thoughtless to
00:19:26.020 the lives of U.S. servicemen and women, more thoughtless to the sacrifice made by countless
00:19:33.200 Americans over the past 20 years, not to mention the treasure, not only the blood, but the treasure
00:19:38.120 that the American people poured into that country, the trust that the Afghans placed in us.
00:19:44.600 You cannot think of a more disgraceful exit than what happened on August 30th of 2021.
00:19:53.860 And I think it was the most shameful day in history.
00:19:56.820 Of course, it's better that an injustice be done to you than you inflict an injustice on others.
00:20:03.600 And 9-11, Pearl Harbor, we had an injustice inflicted on us.
00:20:09.160 But the U.S. government, the Biden administration, not only inflicted an injustice on the people
00:20:15.340 of Afghanistan, all those veterans who sacrificed years of their lives and many gave the ultimate
00:20:20.760 sacrifice, all of that was just spit on by the Biden administration.
00:20:26.920 And then now countless Christians and friends and allies of ours are living in hiding, and
00:20:32.760 many have already been killed.
00:20:33.780 Just a quick note before we return, if you would like to stay up to date on LifeSite's
00:20:40.320 coverage of the latest life, family, and culture news, subscribe to one of our many newsletters
00:20:44.940 by going to lifesitenews.com slash subscribe.
00:20:48.320 And if you'd like to help us bring our truth-telling coverage to millions around the world, please
00:20:53.220 consider making a one-time or monthly donation at give.lifesitenews.com.
00:20:58.420 And now, back to the video.
00:20:59.860 I'd love you to just recount, if you could, one story, one that touches your heart and
00:21:08.220 one that you've seen the fulfillment of with one of the families or people that you've rescued.
00:21:14.240 Okay.
00:21:14.660 So one story is, I was in my home office here in Texas, and a young Afghan woman was released
00:21:22.200 from a refugee camp because her pregnancy was so problematic that the doctors at the camp
00:21:28.060 said, we can't help you, go find help outside.
00:21:30.480 And they just let this young couple into America out. 0.98
00:21:34.560 And they went to Austin because they had Afghan relatives there.
00:21:38.440 They showed up in Austin.
00:21:40.420 And this woman had a very serious problem pregnancy. 0.99
00:21:43.640 And I'm imagining she probably didn't know what she was going to do with this pregnancy. 0.60
00:21:49.340 And she ended up at a pregnancy center, pro-life counseling, pregnancy counseling center. 0.93
00:21:55.260 And the director of the pregnancy center saw me either on LifeSite News or EWTN.
00:22:00.800 And she reached out to me, thinking I lived in Hawaii, not knowing I lived just an hour away,
00:22:06.020 saying that there was this young couple.
00:22:08.340 The woman was in a problem pregnancy. 1.00
00:22:09.920 She is despairing and depressed and broken and doesn't even want to live anymore because
00:22:16.700 her one-year-old child was separated from her and her husband when the bomb blast went
00:22:23.060 off at Abbey Gate.
00:22:24.300 She had been with her mother, her husband, and the mother was holding the baby.
00:22:29.800 And when the bomb went off and the crowds got pushed in different ways, grandma and baby
00:22:33.940 was shoved by the crowd in one direction.
00:22:35.840 And mommy, the mom and dad, were pulled into the airport by military police.
00:22:42.620 And they were literally pulled onto the airport and huddled on a plane to land in the United
00:22:48.160 States, hoping that their grandma and baby made it as well, but didn't.
00:22:54.220 So they were stuck in Kabul.
00:22:56.140 By this point, they were in communication with grandma.
00:22:59.460 Baby and grandma were hungry.
00:23:01.640 This was the winter.
00:23:02.780 They were starving and they were cold.
00:23:04.600 They didn't have heat and they didn't have money for fuel, for coal or kerosene or for
00:23:10.500 food.
00:23:11.760 And I was able to jump in my car, go to Austin, meet with the pregnancy center director and
00:23:16.540 this beautiful young Afghan couple.
00:23:19.320 And not only was the Vulnerable People Project able to pay for their housing and give them
00:23:24.180 a food allowance here in the United States, within hours of meeting the couple, we had four
00:23:30.300 months of food, baby formula, coal, kerosene, and baby wipes, everything grandma would need
00:23:36.980 delivered to the door of the grandma's house.
00:23:40.960 And we were able to, in the past eight weeks, after a very long, hard struggle, able to get
00:23:47.700 the baby brought out of Afghanistan to the United States, on the way to the United States.
00:23:51.580 So this was because of LifeSite News.
00:23:55.340 And what I love about this story is it's really the pro-life movement working together.
00:23:59.420 You have a pro-life pregnancy center in Austin, caring for the vulnerable women of Austin.
00:24:05.440 And here, an Afghan refugee walks through the door.
00:24:08.280 She sees me on Catholic television or LifeSite News and reaches out to me.
00:24:12.820 And then together, thanks to LifeSite News, EWTN, this pregnancy center, and my organization,
00:24:19.920 a grandma and a baby survived a brutal winter.
00:24:23.460 And the baby was eventually reunited with his family here in the United States.
00:24:29.000 And to me, that is what the Catholic Apostolate, to me, is best summarized by the Pieta, where
00:24:34.800 Our Lady has the second person of the Trinity resting dead across her lap, Jesus Christ.
00:24:41.500 And what we are to do is to be with our Lord at the cross.
00:24:46.920 And the best way to do that is to serve the most vulnerable people in the world.
00:24:50.860 And of course, the child in the womb is extremely vulnerable.
00:24:54.060 And this young Afghan woman's child in the womb was vulnerable.
00:24:57.240 Her child in Afghanistan was vulnerable.
00:24:59.540 And together, these Catholic apostolates and a pro-life apostolate came together to care
00:25:05.040 for them across the globe, really, to me, is one of my favorite stories.
00:25:09.480 And another one that I'll keep it in our tribe is Sister Deirdre Byrne, who I did not know,
00:25:15.200 and she gave, but I knew her from that wonder, I didn't know her personally, she gave that
00:25:19.560 wonderful opening prayer to Trump's convention last 2020, where she said, I'm not only pro-life,
00:25:26.260 I'm pro-eternal life.
00:25:27.420 It was very powerful and very beautiful.
00:25:28.980 Well, Congressman Chris Smith's office told her she had some doctors that she served with,
00:25:33.700 because she's also a surgeon and retired officer in the Army.
00:25:37.540 She had to get some of her former surgeons that she served with out of Afghanistan.
00:25:43.180 There were 13 of them.
00:25:45.480 And Congressman Chris Smith put her in touch with our organization.
00:25:48.920 And we were able to bring them food and coal and move them to a safe house immediately.
00:25:52.500 And within three weeks of first contact, we were able to evacuate them out of the country.
00:25:57.140 And again, there we have Sister Byrne, Deirdre Byrne's thanks, and thanks to LifeSite News
00:26:02.700 and LifeFunder, we were able to save these 13 doctors' lives.
00:26:06.380 But there's countless stories of Christians.
00:26:08.580 We rescued a girl who was, her mother died and her stepfather sold her as a Taliban bride.
00:26:15.280 We were able to literally snatch her from the Taliban and to get her to safety. 0.82
00:26:21.880 And that was a very tough mission.
00:26:24.960 So many pastors, so many Christian families were involved in rescuing a Catholic religious order,
00:26:30.720 involving another country's special forces.
00:26:34.240 And that was unbelievable.
00:26:36.940 But John Henry, thanks to LifeSite News and LifeFunder, this happened.
00:26:41.540 And now we're looking at a very tough year.
00:26:43.900 People forgot or they think it's over.
00:26:46.060 Most organizations have left, and when these organizations leave, they hand to us their
00:26:51.080 people and say, can you keep them alive?
00:26:53.900 And so for us, every month, we have more and more people piled on to our organization's
00:26:59.600 area of responsibility.
00:27:01.800 We're rescuing people, resettling people, but as more and more organizations close up shop,
00:27:07.340 we have more and more responsibilities every month.
00:27:10.060 And John Henry, we will be with our Afghan allies.
00:27:13.160 We will be with the Christians of Afghanistan until they are safe.
00:27:17.640 And if that means that this Afghan relief program is something that VPP will have to build out
00:27:22.780 and do for the next 10 years, we'll do it.
00:27:24.860 But we will remember them.
00:27:27.500 We will fight for them diligently.
00:27:29.420 So many of them are losing hope and they're despairing.
00:27:32.040 But I just, and I know they listen to these programs I'm on, and I just want them to know
00:27:36.140 that we are working for them every single day.
00:27:39.780 My team works all day, every day to ensure their safety.
00:27:45.100 There are so many organizations right now that have lost the faith.
00:27:49.860 They've lost their way.
00:27:50.900 They're funding pro-abortion ventures.
00:27:53.940 They're gone woke, if you will.
00:27:56.940 And your funding of those organizations has to stop.
00:28:00.620 But there are actually really good organizations to fund.
00:28:03.660 And Jason Jones's Vulnerable People Project is, as you can hear, doing incredible, life-saving work.
00:28:11.620 Go to lifefunder.com slash extra mile and please donate generously.
00:28:17.020 Jason, thank you so very much.
00:28:19.080 God bless you.
00:28:20.020 And God bless all of you.
00:28:21.760 We'll see you next time.
00:28:22.580 Hi, everyone.
00:28:25.240 This is John Henry Weston.
00:28:26.360 We hope you enjoyed this video.
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00:28:45.280 and culture news.
00:28:46.560 Thanks for watching, and may God bless you.
00:28:52.580 We'll see you next time.