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David Rutherford Show: America’s Citizen Disaster-Response Team: The United Cajun Navy
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- [00:00]
Brian Trasher
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
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Guaranteed Human support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com.
- [01:05]
Jacob Goldstein
This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo@odoo.com that's O D O.
- [01:36]
Lenovo Advertisement
O.com there's no championship league for small business owners, but if there was, you'd be at the top of the standings. Because going pro with Lenovo Pro means you've got the winning formation. One on one advice IT solutions and customized hardware powered by Intel Core Ultra processors help you stay ahead of the competition. Business Goes Pro with Lenovo Pro Sign up for free@lenovo.com Pro.
- [02:09]
Tara Davis Woodhull and Hunter Woodhull
Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
- [02:27]
PennyMac Advertisement
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- [02:38]
Brian Trasher
The government has a way of seeing something that works and going, hey, that's really awesome. Let's go try to manage it now that we know it's working. And then they just it up.
- [02:46]
David Rutherford
That's right, 100% in 2024, when Helene.
- [02:50]
Brian Trasher
Hit FEMA had like a $300 billion budget. Whatever it is something crazy. And I was like, they still suck. How is this possible? It brought up some really bad memories of being left by my own government to fend from myself.
- [03:02]
David Rutherford
Motivated red blooded Americans who care about their neighbors get shit done while the government tries to figure out who's going to have to take responsibility and where's the funding going to come from.
- [03:14]
Brian Trasher
Just being able to go to a disaster theater and look somebody in the eye and say, hey, I've been through it. I know the way out. So follow me.
- [03:22]
David Rutherford
In today's America, the division seems overwhelming. And that's why I wanted to highlight an organization that brings people together and solves problems. The United Cajun Navy. Today on the David Rutherford Show. When I do shows like this, I. I do them for a reason. I do them because obviously we're all inundated and overwhelmed by the tsunami of division that's taking place within America. Whether it's in Minneapolis or it's wherever it might be, it seems to be our country is being ripped apart. And so I thought it would be a powerful show to be able to bring someone on that represents the best of what America can be. And that's Brian Trasher with the United Cajun Navy. Perhaps you've seen him throughout the last decade plus or so. Actually even back to all the way back to Katrina. Groups of people from Louisiana, initially from Texas, that band together to solve problems. When Americans are hit with catastrophic weather events or catastrophic circumstances. These men and women of the United Cajun Navy step forward in and dedicate their time selflessly to support their fellow Americans. And that's why I'm excited to bring Brian Trasher from the United Cajun Navy on to explain to you what it is they do and what it is you can do to support them. Welcome to the show, Brian.
- [05:05]
Brian Trasher
All right, Dave, thanks. Glad we finally got to hook up.
- [05:07]
David Rutherford
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I think a lot of our audience has heard loosely of you guys, obviously from Hurricane Helene and other natural disasters, but could you just give a quick brief back on the history of the United Cajun Navy, where it comes from and kind of what the structure of the organization looks like now.
- [05:30]
Brian Trasher
So, you know, the. The term Cajun Navy was really like a colloquial term dubbed by the media. And I've been able to find evidence of it going back to Hurricane Betsy in New Orleans, 1967. Oh, wow. And where the media dubbed all these, you know, good Samaritans and boats going to rescue flood victims as the Cajun Navy. Fast forward to 2005. Katrina hits new Orleans. The levees break, city floods, and same thing happens. A lot of, you know, sportsmen from South Louisiana saw what was happening on tv, didn't see any real response happening, decided to hitch their own boats up and go down there and start saving lives. There were several hundred of them that showed up by all accounts at that time. And then after a few days went by and things continued to disintegrate conditions, that's when safety and security started becoming an issue. So a lot of people left, understandably. That's when then President George W. Bush sent General Russell Honoree to come down and take over what became known as Joint Command Katrina. And he. He basically put the call out, and you got to remember this is before it's 2005. So pre iPhone One, pre social media for real, other than like message boards and things like that. But he put out a call and said, hey, any of these boat captains that are still here, come meet me at the Superdome at this time and. And whatnot. And he had a meeting and it was 68 captains that showed up.
- [07:01]
David Rutherford
Wow.
- [07:01]
Brian Trasher
One of them was our founder, Todd Terrell. And he, he said, look, he said, you guys are going to be my Cajun Navy. We got lives to save. He said, I have the ultimate authority in this state. He's like, don't let anybody tell you that you can't go to this neighborhood or that neighborhood. Don't let any politicians order you around. He's like, right now they all answer to me. The President has declared this, and this is the way it's going to go. We're saving lives. You know, we're not. We're not dealing with any bs. So that's what happened for the next few days. And as the. As they got the pumps back on started to dewater the city. But at that time, like those 68 and probably some more came in after that when they saw that things were kind of safe again and they. They saved countless lives and got a lot of people out of those nasty floodwaters.
- [07:43]
David Rutherford
Yeah, it was interesting because I was at Blackwater at the time, and Erik Prince rogered up. A bunch of guys sent him down. And there's a crazy story of a guy's protecting this, you know, billionaire's house on the outskirts, and, you know, through gates rolls up all these Suburbans, and, you know, the Blackwater guys come out with, you know, guns like, who are you? And these guys step out and they're all packing, too, and they all reach in and pull out their badges. And there was this standoff. And they ended up zip tying all the Blackwater guys. And it turns out it was like some, you know, bad cops that were going around and stealing from all the houses and stuff. So people really, you know, I say that to say this was a war zone when it took place. This was not like, oh, you're in your little bass boat. You're, you know, in two feet of water, and you're going into, you know, areas where everybody's Kumbaya. I mean, it was crazy dangerous.
- [08:41]
Brian Trasher
It was. You're right. And there was. There was sort of two kinds of scenarios. One kind of what you're describing, where you had bad elements, some of them, you know, rogue law enforcement decided that this was their chance to strike it rich. A couple of them broke into a Cadillac dealership and broke the key box open and started stealing cars. Now, later, they said they were just trying to, you know, evacuate, but, I mean, you know, in brand new Cadillacs. Okay, so. But then the other kind of scenario you come across is, you know, people very frantic, starting to really lose composure. You know, they've been standing in floodwaters or on a roof for a couple days, and a boat comes by, and they don't realize that, you know, the boat has to. Has to stay balanced. You have to keep your ballast so it doesn't flip over. So they're grabbing on and all that. And those are the people. I didn't really mean to cause harm, but it was still a dangerous situation. So everybody, all the volunteers that came down really had to keep their cool. And fortunately, and still to this day, our best volunteers are our combat veterans, because number one, no matter how hard I try, I can't freak them out. But number two, they. They really can. They keep calm in these types of adverse conditions. And a lot of the guys that, you know, suffer from ptsd. I've been told that sort of getting back in the action and getting that dopamine adrenaline flow and actually helps them with their ptsd. So we're really excited to be able to just perform that Little service, having them volunteer with us.
- [10:05]
David Rutherford
That's really cool. So could you describe kind of how big the Cajun Navy's gotten, the structure of it, and then the different areas of OPER that you guys focus on?
- [10:19]
Brian Trasher
Sure. So, you know, I mentioned Hurricane Katrina 2005. Fast forward to 2016. There were some really devastating floods in the Baton Rouge and surrounding parishes area. And Todd, our founder, like I said, he lives in Baton Rouge and he decided to get, you know, the gang back together, so to speak. A lot of his friends with boats and he like, you know, kind of went out and did it again. And it was that point when he realized that, hey, you know, every time there's a bad flood or bad severe weather situation that causes a lot of damage, you know, the government really doesn't, they don't move that fast and people need help right away. So that's when he decided he wanted to start a full time organization, which at that point there was a lot of groups that called themselves Cajun Navy this, Cajun Navy that, and they were, you know, kind of loosely organized. But he, he got a bunch of them together and said, look, we're going to be stronger if we work together. We'll name it the United Cajun Navy. And a lot of those groups came in under that, that, that one banner. And, and, and that's, and I got involved in 2017. I always like to tell a story that I got involved with the United King Navy because I was running my mouth. 2017 was when Harvey was hitting it as you, we talked about before we came on camera. I, I had just, I was doing some work down in Cuba and I was, I was in California. Back in the States. I was in California and there was a network that had asked me to come on and talk about the fact that they had just sworn in a new president. The first time there was a non Castro president in 60 years or whatever it was. And, and when I got to the studio, Hurricane Harvey was hitting and all hell was breaking loose in the Houston area. So they were like, oh, hey, we're gonna have to bump your interview. They're like, wait a minute, you went through Katrina, right? You're from New Orleans. I'm like, yeah. They're like, why don't you come on air and just talk about, you know, bad hurricanes? And I'm like, yeah, I can wing it, you know. So as the interview went on, the lady who was interviewing me made a comment to the effect of like, you know, how do people help? Do they give the Red Cross and me just like having no self control and running my mouth all the time. I said, no, don't give to the Red Cross. I said, none of the money they, they get goes to the victims. I said, I said, we got a group from Louisiana called the Cajun Navy. And they're as we speak, on their way to Houston with trucks and boats and airboats and, and aircraft and all kind of stuff. They're going to go help out. I said, you could see them on social media and all they're doing is posting like PayPal links like, and trying to get money for gas and food and things like that. I said, go vote. Go, go, you know, donate to them. Well, I get back to my office back in Louisiana the following week and I had a message from the Red Cross. So somebody, somebody had seen the interview and I think that they, they thought I might have been like on this crusade to kind of go after the Red Cross and fast forward. We have a good relationship with them now. But at the time I was like, oh, no. So I called and they weren't mad at me. They were just, hey, we just wanted you to know that we do work with a Cajun Navy group. And they introduced me to Todd and we went to dinner a couple times and he was kind of telling me sort of like his vision of how he'd like to see this, this organization get structured and, and potentially grow. And so we got him. We got it incorporated file for the 501C3 designation, which we got started from there. Fast forward to in. Over the years we would get like, we started off with like a little, you know, like storage shed. Then we got our first warehouse that was maybe like 4,000 square feet. Then we got up to like 10,000 square feet. Well, I'm happy to tell you right now in 2026, we have 55,000 square feet.
- [13:37]
David Rutherford
Wow.
- [13:37]
Brian Trasher
Of warehouse space at the Baton Rouge airport, which is great because we have eight loading docks on the street side and on the back side, of course, is the tarmac and the Baton Rouge airport. So we can literally have. And we have had cargo planes land taxi up to the rear of our warehouse. We unload them, take them straight through to the loading docks, put them on trucks, and get them out to the people that are in need. So we have a really efficient operation now that we're proud of. And as far as, like, how we're structured and how big we've gotten, I decided to start a state chapter system. I felt like that was the best way to keep the cream of the crop volunteers that we meet on deployment in other states, active and at the ready. So now we have 14 active United Cajun Navy chapters. I call it the SEC states. It's mostly the states that have SEC football teams, but we are forming another group. There's a really awesome group of search and rescue guys out in like, like Montana, Idaho, Utah, and they focus on Yellowstone because I was surprised at how many people go missing in that park every year. It's crazy, but we're hoping that they become United Cajun Navy Yellowstone. So we're we're kind of working on our own little manifest Destiny. But we've got, you know, hundreds, I would say hundreds of like at the ready volunteers that we talk to on a regular basis. But we have a database of over 20,000 people that when we put the call out for certain things, we were able to really mobilize a Good Samaritan force to get out there and do some good.
- [15:04]
Public Investing Advertisement
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures this.
- [16:05]
Jacob Goldstein
Is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need Check out Odoo at o d o o.com that's o d o o.com there's no championship.
- [16:38]
Lenovo Advertisement
League for small business owners, but if there was, you'd be at the top of the standings. Because going pro with Lenovo Business Pro means you've got the winning formation. One on one advice IT solutions and customized hardware powered by Intel Core Ultra processors help you stay ahead of the competition. Business goes pro with Lenovo Pro. Sign up for free@lenovo.com Pro Lenovo Lenovo.
- [17:08]
Tara Davis Woodhull and Hunter Woodhull
Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull. And I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
- [17:26]
PennyMac Advertisement
Learn more at pennymac.com pennymac loan services llc/housing lender nmls id 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.
- [17:38]
David Rutherford
Patriotism isn't a marketing trend for Black Rifle Coffee company It's the foundation of the company. Black Rifle Coffee Company has been built on it since day one. Their American Roasted coffee not only fuels your day, but gives back to veterans, first responders and their families with every single purchase. Last year they eliminated medical debt, helped build homes, provided for natural disaster response teams, funded education for children of fallen warriors, and so, so much more. So as America hits its 250th year, BRCC is kicking off 2026 with killer new products and the same great mission that they've had from the start. Just go grab a bag of Tactisquatch, walking the neighbors or the spirit of 76 roasts for people who get up early, train hard and don't quit. Oh yeah, I love that one. And to fuel the new year, they're dropping cold brew coffee cans in just black and vanilla. No fluff, no excuses, just clean caffeine. You gotta know I love that. Need something with ever more horsepower. Grapex brings 200 milligrams of caffeine, zero sugar, and a great blast. That hits harder than the door charge. All right, if you're looking for BRCC coffee, find it at Walmart, Target Kroger, your local Black Rifle coffee shop or blackrifflecoffee.com Black Rifle Coffee veteran founded American Roasted. This is America's coffee. Oh yeah. When you think about the the abilities of what you guys have been able to do and then developing this network. I, A lot of people, they see what takes place with FEMA or government response and crisis. You know, there was the Haiti earthquakes. And I mean, I was, I was working with Lynn University to try and coordinate a response team to go down and find students out of Boston. A former SEAL Team six guy was on that team. And, and what you're seeing is, you're seeing organizations become almost operational, like a military unit, and when the key to success within that is logistics. Can you talk about how logistics, supply chains work? Like maybe pick one of the recent events you've had to deal with and then what happened, how, how you get ramped up logistically and then distribute to what you're doing on the ground.
- [20:39]
Brian Trasher
Sure. So, you know, you're right. Legit. The two biggest things in the, in the disaster response is logistics and comms. You know, comms really everything. Because I'll give you an example, Hurricane Helene, you know, we're, we're known as being guys, you know, on, on boats and first shrimp boots on the ground and all that. When I got to North Carolina a couple days after landfall, which by the way, I was actually in the National Response center at FEMA headquarters here in D.C. when it hit. It was a coincidence, but I flew down to North Carolina and I quickly realized with the mountainous terrain and all that, like, boats weren't going to do any good. And so I realized that we were going to need helicopters. And so we got a couple of them from a helicopter school and started flying missions out of Hickory, going into the mountains, places like Bat Cave and Suannanoe and all that. But, and then I, I told my guy, I said, look, every, every flight school you can find, I, I need you to like, I need as many birds as I can. And I'm a pilot, I'm not Hilo rated, but, but, but I, I got about 60 hours in Hilo. Now I got the bug. I want to go get raided. But anyway, I quickly realized that, that, you know, we were delivering Starlinks and we were like, when we couldn't find an lz, we were literally like getting as low as we could and tossing them down. And you know, you had like police and fire departments that, you know, were able to get these Starlinks up and running. Of course, Elon geofenced that area out, made it subscription free, which is awesome. And, and so they were able to get communication and start giving intel reports back to their state leaders. And I had gotten a, a call that, hey, there's a VIP here at. Hickory that's asking for you. And I'm like, well, how does anybody even know I'm here? Like, and why is the VIP asking for me? Like, I'm nobody. So I get back there and it was, it turned out it was Ivanka Trump. Ivanka Trump was there with a couple of her friends. They landed a hawker at the airport and she had 300 Starlink units. So we used everything from helicopters to donkeys and mules. And I'm not talking about side by side. I'm talking about the kind with ears to get these units up into the mountains. And within 72 hours, the missing persons list went from 4,000 to under a thousand. That's why I think comms is so important, is you get a lot of, you know, chaos and freaking out about where's my loved ones at? Really, a lot of times they're just incommunicado. Going back to your question about logistics, it's, it kind of, it's, it's been an evolving process for us, but it kind of now works the same. We're very fortunate to have really strong NGO partners around the United States that collect a lot of different type of types of goods. A lot of them are like, in the liquidation business. And so they get like, they'll, you know, have like, some stores that get rid of old inventory to bring in new inventory or discontinued items, things like that, and they sell them to like bin stores and things like that. So what they do is there's a lot of stuff that they, they just want to get rid of, or they got a surplus, so they'll send it to us. And then there's other charities that are maybe not focused on disaster response, but they have, they, they get a, they get a truckload of stuff that's really appropriate for disaster response. And then we'll have like, we'll get a truckload of furniture which we can use sometimes, but like, we'll, we'll just swap it out is what I'm trying to get at. So, like, we've gotten a really good network of just keeping a good inventory and we, so being able to. The number one thing we do, when there's, when we know there's something coming, like a hurricane, we'll pre. Position, we'll put. We'll send a truck up as close as we can to stay out of harm's way, be able to get in quickly, and we pack it what we call 72 kits. So this is the first 72 hours. It's a Kit that basically, you picture somebody that, you know, lost everything, has nothing, but maybe the clothes in their back, if that. So I'm talking about hygiene, snacks, just, you know, water MREs, just stuff to get them through the first 72 hours until Calvary hopefully arrives and gives them some real help. And we'll have those set up there, and we'll have generators and chainsaws, things like that, and we'll get teams out there to clear debris. And so we've gotten good at that. And like I said, the chapter system of having locals on the ground that know what's going on and can act quickly has been a blessing. And so, yeah, it's just. It's been an evolving process, but it's. We're getting better at it every time. And Helene, you know, I'll tell you, Helene was probably by far our most transformational deployment. And it was really like, we've grown. You know, I've been in the organization eight years now. We've grown more in the last two years than we did the previous six that I was with us. And a lot of that's because of Helene. And really, Dave, what it was is that, you know, in 2005, FEMA had 2,000 employees and roughly a $32 million budget. In 2024, when Helene hit, they had 22,000 employees and like, a $300 billion budget, whatever it is, something crazy. And I was like, they still suck. Like, why? You know what I mean? Like, how is this possible? And so I really took it personally, and I really got, you know, I hate to use the word triggered, but, like, I mean, it brought up some really bad memories of being left by my own government to fend from myself, and that's what these Appalachians were going through. And, you know, I'm like, why? Like, why did we not matter? Like, it wasn't the Louisiana lease. It was a Louisiana purchase, okay? We were bought, and we became a state. We're just like everybody else. You know, North Carolina, same thing. You know, just because people live up in the mountains and don't like to be bothered doesn't mean that they don't need help and they don't deserve help. They pay taxes. So that was why we put such a big force over there and stayed so long, is because the. The response was just absolutely unacceptable. Unacceptable in the United States in 2026, especially all the lessons we learned at Katrina and had 20 years to try to get it right, and it was a failure, in my opinion.
- [26:25]
David Rutherford
I. You know, I. I lived in Asheville for three years when I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. And, and you know, I time in those mountains climbing, mountain biking, you know, kayaking, hiking, camping, just going for my runs. I lived right off the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is, you know, mountain to sea trail and have a very close friend that lives out in Marshall in the mountains. And like Marshall was wiped out. People don't like that terrain is, is difficult terrain if there's problems, right, because the mountain roads are usually teeny. It's the, you know, one pass gets shut down and it's over. But on the flip side of that, you do have the most, some of the most resourceful people in the country. And I think just like people from.
- [27:13]
Brian Trasher
Louisiana and Texas and we nicknamed them the Mountain Cajuns.
- [27:17]
David Rutherford
The Mountain Cajuns. There you go.
- [27:19]
Brian Trasher
They enjoyed that.
- [27:20]
David Rutherford
And so you know, I, I felt the same way. Now. I've, you know, I've, I've felt, I felt pretty strongly about government response for a long period of time now based on what I've seen and not seen. And, but the reality is you still have to work with them, right? You still have to be, have cordial relationships with your, you know, your municipality commander, with your state, you know, chain of command and then the federal. So how do you guys navigate that when you know you're going to deal with some extreme bureaucracy?
- [28:01]
Brian Trasher
Well, like I said alluded to earlier, the, ironically when Helene was approaching the Florida Panhandle, I was in D.C. with a couple of my team members and we had some pre planned meetings with FEMA and the Red Cross that had been a couple months in the making. It was just a coincidence that we were there when they activated the, the response center and they were like, hey, why don't you all, you know, come up and sit in and actually like they, you know, like the big table with the big wall of TVs and you had very high ranking officials on all of them. And I was a little overwhelmed, but they introduced us and said hey, we got members of the Cajun Navy here. And I was like, oh wow, Cajun. Like you know. But, but nevertheless, to FEMA's credit part, the reason we were there is because they were trying to figure out how they could get us more involved with the response aspect because they don't do that. Like people think pima's the first responder. They're not, they're just a grant management agency. And I tell them all the time, like y' all have to get better at the expectation game because you can't just keep Letting people think that there's people with FEMA shirts going to go door to door rescuing people. That's not what y' all do. You know, they contract SAR teams and all that. You know that. But I mean, it's, it's just not what, what they do. So to their credit, they, we were, they were in the middle of trying to figure that out, and they were explaining to us some of the challenges they have with the Stafford act to be able to, like, officially contract with NGOs. And I think the only ones they were allowed to at the time were, were Rubicon and the Red Cross. And that's why we were meeting with the Red Cross also. So there is a desire on FEMA's park to bring the Cajun Navy in as sort of like the tip of the spear. We haven't formalized anything yet because they keep going through a lot of evolutions as well. I mean, they, that oversight council which we submitted testimony to is in the process, and President Trump just extended it for another few months because they were about to give their report, or they were. They were on a deadline to, to give their report. But nevertheless, whatever FEMA looks like after that, we hope to be involved in it. And by all accounts, they still want us to be involved. They just have to figure out what they're going to look like first. But I told them straight up because I'm very candid when I'm talking to government officials that testified before Congress. And I said, listen, FEMA does not need to be under dhs. And that's no reflection on Secretary Noem or any of her predecessors. It just doesn't make sense. It really, in my opinion, needs to be under DOD for a couple of reasons. Number one, as you know, the Defense Logistics Agency is like FEMA for the military or, you know, and they're very good at what they do. So, like, you have this really well trained force of soldiers that are really good at moving stuff around and getting it staged for war. Why couldn't they do that for disaster response? You know, and then number two, and I, and I got a lot of laughs when I said this to Congressman, but I was being very honest. I'm like, the DoD has never, ever passed an audit. You know what I mean? And, you know, people complain about like, well, why do you want them in charge? Like, they can't even control their own money. I'm like, no, they told, they, they told you they lost $80 million. They didn't really lose it. They just can't tell you what they spent it on probably all black ops illegal shit, you know what I mean? But like that's the kind of drunken sailor mentality, you know, and you can go back later with auditors and punish the people that you found out who stole. But number and going into like how the DoD budget works, it's never going to get shut, it's never going to be the subject of a shutdown fight in Congress. There's not one member of the 535 members of Congress that's going to have the balls to do a shutdown over the DoD budget. It's not going to happen. So it's protected in that way. So they laughed at first, but then I think some of them started scratching their heads say, you know what that crazy little guy like, he, he, he might have a point there, you know, So I hope they listen, you know.
- [31:45]
David Rutherford
And I, I think that's another interesting aspect of, of your all's growth too is that you've proven yourself so often time and time again that you know, motivated red blooded Americans who care about their neighbors get done while the government tries to figure out who's going to have to take responsibility and where's the funding going to come from. So it's cool to see that you guys are now in that Rubicon sphere of, of influence. Tell me, obviously you're in Washington D.C. right now. Tell me what that's like gone. Going from, you know, a small organization to now where you have a, of 20,000, you're in a state by state. How it start now, what it works with your lobbying initiatives and getting a seat at the table. Does that look like just getting to be a participant in natural disasters? Does it look like getting grants from whoever it is? What, what is your all's mission for that level of, of federal integration?
- [32:56]
Brian Trasher
All good questions. I'll try to compartmentalize them.
- [32:57]
David Rutherford
So, yeah, sorry. I have a tendency to ask like.
- [33:00]
Brian Trasher
10 questions in one, so I'm used to it. But, but you know, starting with sort of like our outreach efforts with, with government. It's, it's good in the sense that they're paying attention. I feel like a lot of meetings I'll walk into, everybody is like, they heard of this mythical Cajun Navy force that's out there. They don't really know who it is or what it looks like or exactly what they do. But we've heard of it. We're in this guy's, you know, coming to meet with us now. And so I feel like I'm more of like a, like A show pony, you know, walking in. But then once I start talking, they realize, well, okay, this dude's been through a lot. He's got a lot to say and got a lot of, you know, and, and I'm not, you know, an expert at it, but like, I've been through enough of it to where I could just tell you like what worked for us and what doesn't. And hopefully that gives some guidance as to what maybe our leaders should do at the top level. Going back to your question about managing how big we've got, it's a struggle, honestly, because we're still an all volunteer force with nobody even on the leadership team now. Nobody's on salary. We have some professional people that we pay like for, you know, keeping our finances. We have people that work in our warehouse that get, that get. We have a staffing company that we hire to keep the, that, that staffing going at the warehouse and keep things moving. But we, every time we get to a sort of like a financial point where we think we could start paying salaries to people so that they could spend more time on the administration of it, we see some kind of cool toy that we just have to have that, you know, like a new, a new mobile command center or another boat or another.
- [34:38]
David Rutherford
Yeah, I saw that new truck that you got. That thing looks unbelievable.
- [34:42]
Brian Trasher
Yeah, yeah, it's Black Betty is what we call her. She's gonna be riding in a couple of Mardi Gras parades this year too. So that's gonna be, that's gonna be.
- [34:49]
David Rutherford
Pretty cool with the IVs, right?
- [34:52]
Brian Trasher
With hopefully. Yeah, but, but yeah, so it's, it's, it's kind of overwhelming because now I've got, and I've got a full time job. I still gotta, you know, put food on the table. But, but this does take up a lot of my time. But, but I enjoy it. No doubt about it. It's very fulfilling, but it's, I gotta manage a lot of people, I gotta manage a lot of relationships. I still got to try to fundraise to keep everything going. So it's, it's a lot but you know, we're, we're getting through it and I just, I'm excited about where we're going. One of the things we got into last year that's been successful for us is we decided to get into the weather game, so to speak. We, we, we have our own weather app, it's on Android and in the Apple Store. This, the Cajun Navy weather app. Pretty easy to find. We have our Own in house meteorologist Amy Metz. She kind of is the science part of it telling us like what to expect with weather and like predicting landfalls and things like that. And then we got involved with a lot of storm chasers like Reed Timmer and in addition to just it being cool to go chase tornadoes and stuff, but like, but those storm chasers are really like responder zero, not even first responders. They're, they're there before the shit even hits the fan. And so now that we have relationships with them and sometimes we have people embedded with them, they, they'll be able to tell us right away, hey, this just tornado just hit this town. It looks like it hit some structures, is probably some, you know, some injuries and damage, things like that. We know it sometimes before the local emergency manager does, you know what I mean? Because the storm chasers are out there on the ground and the weather, National Weather Service is counting on them to feed information as well back to them so they can inform the public. So we're always trying to do stuff to get improve our response time, improve our capabilities and our overall value that we bring to the table because we don't really want to run anything. We want to be force multipliers. And then to answer your question about like government grants, there's been a lot of conversations about that. My hesitancy has always been, and it's always going to be that once you start taking Uncle Sam's money, you got to start following Uncle Sam's rules. And I don't want to tell them, I don't want them, you know, telling me how many like, you know, one legged, two headed, you know, volunteers I have to have or whatever the, whatever the criteria is now. And I don't want them, you know, turning this into a hand puppet either as far as, you know, and starting to move an agenda. Because that's what politicians always try to do is they always try to push an agenda. So if there's a scenario in which we could appropriately like fee for service contract or even just get reimbursed for like freight and things like that we spend money on, like that's a conversation we could have. But if the government just offered me like a bunch of money and said here, here, just, you know, keep doing what you're doing, here's a bunch of money. Oh, by the way, here's a bunch of rules we need you to follow now that you're taking a federal grant. I tell them thanks but no thanks, we'll just, we'll just keep grinding it out through our little website donation method.
- [37:52]
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- [38:52]
Jacob Goldstein
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- [39:37]
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- [40:08]
Tara Davis Woodhull and Hunter Woodhull
Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage. We chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA.
- [40:25]
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- [40:37]
David Rutherford
I love that. That's. That the autonomy is what makes you guys so efficient. I think that's why, you know, contractors always have, you know, you. You're much more efficient. That's why there's so many different contractors in the.
- [40:53]
Brian Trasher
Like, why wouldn't you want to take money? I'm like, because I don't want. I don't want to become like. I mean, like, you know, the government has a way of seeing something that works and going, hey, that's really awesome. Let's go try to manage it now that we know it's working.
- [41:03]
David Rutherford
Yeah. And then they just it up, you know, like 100%.
- [41:06]
Brian Trasher
Okay.
- [41:07]
David Rutherford
All right, before we. We wrap it up, tell us. I mean, you've. You've seen, right, The. The worst possible things that can happen to human beings in these moments. But the beauty, I think, and what makes me so, you know, overwhelmingly supportive of what y' all do is, is in the worst moment of people's lives, you guys can bring them salvation, right? You can save, literally save lives. Tell us one of your favorite examples that, you know, you've seen or heard that the. The United Cajun Navy has been able to do recently. That it just is the representation of what y' all do.
- [41:49]
Brian Trasher
I think on a macro scale, just being able to go to a disaster theater and look somebody in the eye and say, hey, I've been through a Category 5 or whatever hurricane, and I've had my city flooded and devastated, and I've had my home ruined, and I've had my life changed in a flash. I've been through it. I know the way out, so follow me. So that's on the macro sense, on the microsense, we've gotten more. Because we got so good at search and rescue post disaster. A lot of people have reached out to us about search and rescue of just, like, missing persons, and a lot of it is with children. And we could have a whole show about what I think is probably a bigger human trafficking problem than anybody could even imagine exists in this country. But just recently, we got contacted through some of our people in Oklahoma. There was a young boy named RJ Davis who went missing, and it was a really terrible scenario. At home, you know, drug addict parents, abusive stepfather, the whole nine yards, 12 year old boy, unimaginable what he's had to go through. And he basically was able to get away from them, but he went on his own. He's missing for nine days, but he was able to find himself shelter, keep himself fed and relatively in good shape for nine days. But two of our, three of our volunteers out of Texas went up to Oklahoma. I think two of those three guys are former team members if I'm not mistaken. And within like the first 12 hours of them being in Texas, they found him and they, they brought him back to the, the, the, the incident command that they had in Chickasha, Oklahoma and turn him back over to the authorities. And it was just a very, you know, the whole community was just like, you know, just thrilled that not only is he found but he was safe and he was, you know, and parents like obviously in actually the stepfather like hung himself in his jail cell, thank God. But, but the point is that RJ is never going to have to go back with those people again. He's going to get a new life, probably a new identity, all that kind of stuff. And as soon as he's ready and kind of stable, we're going to bring him down to Louisiana and take him some bow fishing and maybe do some gator hunting when it's in season and let him have some fun.
- [43:59]
David Rutherford
Brian, that, that for me is the pinnacle of what you do, right? If you believe in what this country represents, you believe in what Christianity reps represents, like that's what you do. You go serve the will of those who don't have the capacity to serve themselves. And I just think what you guys are doing is phenomenal. I just really support everything it is you all do. How can the audience support you, follow you and get involved if they want?
- [44:37]
Brian Trasher
So we always say time, talent or treasure. So obviously you can find our website at www.unitedcage and we're on all the big social media. Our biggest, you know, presence is probably on Facebook. We just crossed like 750,000 followers on Facebook and we put a lot of our updates there. We now have a social media team that's helping us stay ahead of, you know, all our posts to make sure we cross post across the other platforms. That's kind of new to us and, and we started a YouTube channel that we're trying to grow to put some of our other features on there. But yeah, so Time, talent or treasury, if you have the time to give to volunteer, you don't have to be a special ops guy. Like you don't have to go out in the field. Like we need people helping answering phones and returning messages and helping at the warehouse sort things that come in and out and treasure. If you have the means and you want to donate, there's a donate function on our website and that's 95% of the. The revenue that we take in every year comes through that method. We get a little bit of help from some very generous family foundations and a little bit of. We've gotten a little bit of money from the Louisiana legislature over the years, which we appreciate. But. But yeah, most of it is just small donations coming in through our website. So yeah, just keep following us. And one thing I tell people that they can do that's absolutely free is just go like and share our social media posts because that helps the algorithm push us out to more people and helps us generate more revenue from those social media platforms which we're trying to build up now.
- [46:05]
David Rutherford
Awesome. Brian, man, thank you so much to you and the Navy you got there with you and all those fine Cajun people that are contributing to saving lives and making the world better place. I really appreciate you coming on.
- [46:19]
Brian Trasher
Yep. And thanks for your service, Dave. Appreciate you having us on.
- [46:22]
David Rutherford
Thank you.
- [46:33]
Jacob Goldstein
This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other. Check out odoo@odoo.com that's O D O.
- [47:15]
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- [47:47]
Brian Trasher
Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires. I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end. Nibbles gone too soon.
- [48:03]
David Rutherford
May he scurry in peace. Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff.
- [48:08]
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- [48:09]
Brian Trasher
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- [48:11]
Jacob Goldstein
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- [48:14]
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- [48:15]
Brian Trasher
Pros for all your home projects@angie.com hey.
- [48:18]
Tara Davis Woodhull and Hunter Woodhull
This is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
- [48:36]
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- [48:48]
Brian Trasher
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.