A little over a week after the flooding in the Texas Hill Country, Mercury One executive director JP Decker joins Glenn Beck to describe what he saw on the ground. The state’s response, he says, was unlike anything he has ever seen, and President Trump’s impact was also incredible. But this is just the beginning of the recovery efforts …

100% of all donations given through Mercury One for the Texas flooding relief go to help the community recover.

To donate now, visit https://mercuryone.org/

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program. More rains in Texas, which, I mean, Texas, I've never seen Texas this green, not this time of year.

Oh, my gosh, it's lush. It's beautiful here.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: Yesterday, I was down -- downtown in a place called Highland Park.

And I saw all these green ribbons around the tree.

And my first reaction was, yellow ribbon.

Who is?

And then my next reaction was like, all right. What does the green ribbon mean? And then I realized, oh, this is for all the loss of life here in Florida, in the last flood.

And J.P. Decker is with us now, who is -- runs Mercury One. And, hey, J., welcome.

J.P.: Thank you, it's good to be here.

GLENN: First time, J.P. ever -- we've known each other how long?

J.P.: Fourteen, fifteen years. Something like that. Low number there.

GLENN: Yeah, I know. I lose track of time. But you -- for the very first time, you wrote to me, on day one, and I said, what's happening with the floods?

And you said, we're just staying out of the way. What?

For the first time ever, since Mercury One has been doing this. He said, the state has this so buttoned up, we just want to stay out of the way.

So we were just feeding people.

J.P.: Yeah. We were working with our partners. We didn't want to get in the way of search-and-rescue.

As you were saying, the loss of life on this one, it was horrific. To see what these kids went through.

GLENN: Do you know what the loss of life was, Pat? Off the top of your head?
PAT: Last I saw was 129.

J.P.: Yeah, I think it's about 130, 140 now. And they're still missing...

PAT: Still missing over 100. 150.

J.P.: Over 100. It's horrific.

GLENN: It's horrific.

J.P.: And they just had flooding again, so that means everything moves down more.

That first week. We took a week, when it came down. Because we wanted to stay out of the way. There were too many people, with the loss of life. And the search-and-rescue.

GLENN: Is this our footage?

J.P.: This is some of the drone footage. What's amazing about this, that's not even the river. That's right next to the river.

GLENN: This was a runoff?

J.P.: Yeah. This is a runoff. What's interesting though, walking through this area, there's just regular locals. And probably people from all around Texas, just searching.

I mean, they brought their own shovels. They brought their own pickaxes. They're just trying to help --

GLENN: How do you search and stuff like -- you're washed down. And you were probably. I mean, bodies would be swept up in the logs.

J.P.: Yeah. Yeah.

GLENN: Silt.

J.P.: There's search-and-rescue teams from all over the country. And that's, again, we saw that in North Carolina.

GLENN: Look at that. If you happen to be watching on the Blaze, it's -- I mean, this is footage that Mercury One just brought back. And is that the runoff, or is that the river?

J.P.: That is the river right there.

And right in that area, we are helping the little town because there were about 26 homes that were hit pretty hard by it. So we're helping that area provide, you know, the sheetrock and everything they need to kind of rebuild. But the day before we were in that neighborhood, about 200 yards away, they found two adults and a little 9-month-old.

PAT: Oh, jeez.

J.P.: And that's a week after that.

PAT: There's still 101 people missing. 132 confirmed dead and 101 missing. This is unbelievable.

J.P.: It's horrific.

And it's interesting, just talking with some of the locals, about what they're going through. And almost everyone said, we're Texans. We will get through it. And then when you -- we talked to all of our partners. And they said, this is unlike any disaster we've ever seen. Some of them have been doing it for 15, 20 years.

They said, the response from the administration helped us to be able to help them long-term.

And --

GLENN: You mean administration.

The state --

J.P.: The state and federal.

Because they sent the National Guard. But also the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard got there within no time.

We saw the story about the diver.

It's cool to see when administrations do the job. But we as Mercury One.

You know, we as Mercury One.

We always challenge. We were there, talking with people.

Last week, we kind of said, hey. We will need -- we challenged our donors, a million dollars.

When we say that, our people know, that we do not take admin costs.

It's not saying, hey, help us keep the lights on. To help people.

It's literally a million dollars to help people in the hill country.

As soon as we got to the hill country, we got a text from our team saying, within 48 hours, the donors raised a million dollars. And usually with that, we do have to pay credit card fees. But the donors chose to pay $25,000 of fees to go help these people. And I think that alone tells you, one, how amazing our donors are, but how amazing your listeners are. Because they believe and they trust what we're doing with the funds.

GLENN: I have to tell you, J.P., I am so proud of Mercury One.

And I'm so proud of what you have created. It's -- I mean, you were there, and you are the first in, the last out, every time.

J.P.: Yep.

GLENN: And it's just so good.

J.P.: It's so good to see -- to have a nonprofit where you can honestly say, we're going to help you. And we will be there.

And unfortunately, we kept hearing, as soon as the president left, which so glad he was there.

And a lot of the NGOs left. And as soon as the cameras left, they left. And so we kept hearing this from all of our partners.

And thank God, when we choose a partner, we go through a long dating period, and we make sure that they are vetted and taken care of.

But they're staying. We're staying for a long time.

I mean, I just got an update this morning. We're up to almost 150 homes, rebuilt in North Carolina. Our goal is 400 over the next two years.
And 100 percent of the funds that came in last year, go to help those people. And it's just so --

GLENN: Do we have the money for 400 houses?

J.P.: Because of the donors last year, we're very close to being able to cover all of it. So same thing with North Texas.

We will be there for a long time, helping to rebuild these homes. Even though, you're in the main area, the main town.

You see people kind of going about their business, going to a local store, buying some plants. But then you go right around the corner, and the destruction starts. And so the difference with North Carolina, the infrastructure was gone. And no one was coming in to help them.

Here, there's power in the buildings. The businesses are being run. It's the loss of life, and homes that are gone. There are so many mobile homes that are just destroyed. We talked to one mom that lost her husband.

And she and her kids are just living on a couch. So we're helping provide hotel rooms. We're also looking at helping to pay for the funerals of some of these kids. And some of these families.

Because they don't have the funds for it.

And, again, we're seeing that most people did not have flood insurance, in this area. And insurance companies have already denied a couple of people, that we've reached out to, which amazingly they responded that fast. And we're going to help.
We are going to help rebuild.

Because we want this area to be the hill country again. We don't want it to be anything else.
We don't want people to come in and take over the land, like we've seen some of that in Lahaina.

GLENN: You see that now in Los Angeles.

J.P.: Oh, Los Angeles is a nightmare.

GLENN: Oh, yeah, it's the state and city coming in.

And we told you that is going to happen.

That is your plan. That is a plan that was on the books.

PAT: Low-income housing in Pacific Palisades.

GLENN: Yeah, no, no, no.

But they're also -- they're also buying it up and preserving now, like exactly what they were doing in Lahaina. We said that was going to happen.

And we were like, we can't live there anymore.

J.P.: We need to build like a green space to make sure it's really taken care of.

GLENN: Wow.

J.P.: But we helped in Los Angeles as well.

With generators to the local churches. And we're helping, because of what some of our donors did, rebuild some of those local churches, that were destroyed. And no insurance.

And not to say, no one is going to help them.

It's just, there's so many little stories, that we can tell for generations about what Mercury One has done.

GLENN: It's really an amazing thing.

And, you know, I'm amazed at how well the money is managed.

And how far you guys make this money go.

It is really remarkable.

J.P.: Takes an amazing team.

GLENN: Yeah. And I know we have some announcements coming.

And I'm really excited.

J.P.: Me too.

GLENN: Next year will be a really exciting year for Mercury One.

Thank you.

J.P.: Thank you.

GLENN: If you want to get involved, all you have to do is go to MercuryOne.org.

MercuryOne.org.

When there's a disaster, we're there.

And I will tell you, I don't know if either one of you know why I say, 100 percent goes -- when we raise something like this, it goes to whatever it is we're talking about.

You want to raise something. You want to give something now to Texas.

You go to the website.

And say, I want to help this disaster.

And it 100 percent goes there.

Do you know why that is?

To an what happened?

What gave me this idea years ago?

It was right after 911.

And it was a year after.

And remember all of the fundraisers of the Red Cross did.

St. Paul of these big shows.

And we raised all this money.

And I find out about a year later, that they spent I can't remember.

It was -- it was just around a million dollars, I think.

On a new phone system.


PAT: I remember that.

GLENN: You remember that? It was the Red Cross.

And I lost my mind.

Like, you're kidding me, right?

We stood in line, to give blood.

We gave money. We wanted to make sure it was going to the firefighters.

It was going to rebuild, whatever.

And you bought a new phone system with that money.

And it drove me out of my mind.

And I said, if I ever started a charity.

Actually, it wasn't even that.

It was, I want to find the charity that will guarantee me, that none of that crap comes out of the money I'm giving.

I'm not giving so you can get a new phone system. Raise that another way.

J.P.: It's still hard to find that kind of a nonprofit.

PAT: Oh, really hard. And anybody who does over 60 percent, is usually unusual. If 60 percent of your donation goes to where you intend for it to go and then 40 percent administration, that's unusual.

GLENN: Well, everything that we raise, right?

Can we say this? Right? Everything that we raise, when it is earmarked. We have a general fund. And we mark that clearly. That this is to keep the lights on.

But that's why we usually do these fundraisers. But everything -- everything goes right directly to the source.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: That's unheard of.

PAT: It's incredible.

GLENN: Thank you. Appreciate it.
It's MercuryOne.org. MercuryOne.org. And thank you, as an audience, you amaze me. You truly amaze me.

You give me so much hope.

That there are -- there's good, profound -- profound good left in this country.

And every day -- you know, I don't open up the mail and see the checks.

I do get a report, you know, every quarter when the board meets. And I see, it's not coming in, in -- you know, 100,000-dollar chunks. It's coming in, in ten, 20, 50, 100 dollar chunks.

People who are just -- they don't have the money to give big.

It's just so many people, just doing what they can. And I wish I could share -- I wish I could share that hope with you. I wish you could see what I see from my vantage point. It's remarkable what this audience really is.