Who funds
the National Prayer Breakfast,
this right wing group of people who
have this annual prayer breakfast
that unfortunately is also attended
by some congressional Democrats and
democratic presidents.
Well, Jonathan Larson over at TYT
investigated this and
found out that Franklin Graham is
secretly bankrolling
the National Prayer Breakfast.
The son of breakfast co-founder
Billy Graham, Franklin Graham is
openly anti-LGBTQ, anti-Islamic and
partisan.
He's also,
a source close to the family says,
the only source of revenue for
the National Prayer Breakfast
aside from ticket sales.
So why is he doing it?
And more importantly,
why is he bankrolling
the National Prayer Breakfast
secretly, that we don't know.
You can only speculate but
Graham single-handedly enabled
the family to keep its breakfast
operations intact this year.
Because the 2021 breakfast was
remote due to COVID,
the family had zero revenues
from guest registration fees,
which in some cases can be
as much as $500 per person.
Now, how does he carry out
this funding?
Well, he does it through two
different organizations that he
runs.
Two groups that Graham runs
are the Samaritan's Purse,
one of the world's largest relief
organizations, and the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association.
Samaritan's Purse filings up
through 2019 show repeated annual
donations to the family.
The family runs the National Prayer
Breakfast, of course.
The BGEA changed its legal status
in 2014 calling itself a church and
so it no longer has to disclose its
filings but previous records show
that it too gave to the family.
For years the BGEA tax filings
included $20,000 earmarked for
the National Prayer Breakfast, and
reported that the organization
attends the breakfast on behalf of
the ministry.
Samaritan's Purse gave the same
amount annually, bumping it up to
$25,000 in 2015, and then in 2016,
doubling that amount to $50,000,
which it has given every
year since.
Now why is this a big deal?
Why do we want to know
who's bankrolling
the National Prayer Breakfast?
Well, if you might've missed some
of the previous reporting on this
story.
Just know that the National Prayer
Breakfast serves as an opportunity
for both lobbyists and foreign
figures to meet with congressional
lawmakers and essentially go into
these breakaway rooms after
the breakfast to do lobbying.
That goes unnoticed because this
is all kind of done in secret.
And then there's also the fact that
this organization goes to other
countries, essentially pushing for
laws that would be incredibly
harsh, incredibly cruel to various
groups of people, including members
of the LGBT community.
In fact, Forbidden Colours,
an LGBTQ advocacy group,
warned congressional Democrats last
month in an intelligence brief that
their participation in
prayer breakfasts lends credibility
to far-right movements.
The European Parliamentary Forum on
Sexual and
Reproductive Rights reported this
summer that right-wing activists
are staging prayer breakfasts to
help expand their networks.
So a good example is what they did
in Uganda in
essentially pushing for
the punishment of execution toward
gay individuals in that country.
So that's the kind of disgusting
behavior they're taking part in.
Why Democrats would want to be part
of this is certainly questionable.
>> Joe Biden just gave a speech at
the National Prayer Breakfast.
The Clintons have,
so they are told, no, you got to
attend this or maybe they love it.
Maybe they like the agenda that is
being pushed by these guys.
And no Democrat should ever attend
this.
Once we put it to people like
Ro Khanna and Ted Lou and
they found out what was happening,
they're like no, no,
we don't want any part of that and
they're not going anymore.
So it turns out Graham funds the
whole thing, plus the ticket sales.
That's it. So well,
let me just tell you a little
bit about Graham, okay?
So number one, he said,
I think the President's,
when referring to Obama,
I think the President's problem is
that he was born a Muslim.
Well, first of all,
that's not true.
Second of all, it's not a problem.
He just said and
he doesn't take it back at all,
if you're born a Muslim,
that's a problem.
You're going to go attend this
event financed by this monster.
He then went on to say that he was
concerned about President Obama
because he was letting
the Muslim Brotherhood
infiltrate the US government.
That's not only hateful,
it's cuckoo for Coco Puffs.
He's putting this prayer breakfast
on as a show so that he can
get idiot Democrats to show up,
take pictures with them.
And then he can go around going,
no, even the Democrats support
our agenda.
So what else does he have on
his agenda?
Of course he's against same
sex marriage.
He says when Buttigieg was talking
about how he was openly gay,
he's like, that's not anything to
be proud of, it's a sin.
And he said it's embarrassing.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Now there is one public official
that he was in favor of other than,
of course, Donald Trump,
who he loved.
Now Donald Trump has cheated on
his wife.
He's done all these
terrible things.
He's done the sexual assaults, etc.
>> No big deal.
It's not like evangelicals care
about that, right? >> Yeah, he's
like, family values. I mean,
come on, they were porn stars.
What was he going to do,
not have sex with them while his
wife was delivering? Okay, come on,
man. You think these guys are moral
in any way, shape or form?
This is a joke. By the way, he's
pro life and was a staunch advocate
of the Iraq war that killed
hundreds of thousands of civilians,
including a ton of children.
Children were killed,
innocent children were massacred in
Iraq and Graham applaud it.
Yeah, [APPLAUSE]. Hey, after all,
they were born Muslim.
>> I mean, he is pro life though.
>> Yeah, [CROSSTALK] he's pro life.
Okay, no, these guys are filled
with hate. One last thing, I know
you can go on forever with Graham.
So he's in favor of conversion
therapy which is absolutely brutal.
And I think I told you the one
public official
he's in favor of Vladimir Putin.
Now why is he in favor Putin?
because he's passed anti-gay laws.
You're going to go support this
guy's agenda by attending this
prayer breakfast,
as I've seen all these schmuck
Democrats do my entire life.
Will you for
God's sake read something?
We already broke the stories.
This is now the the latest in our
exclusives and
this shows who's funding it.
Is anybody going to really argue
that Franklin Graham is
non-partisan and we're just going
to pray with him and hold hands in
a way that doesn't hurt the LGBT
community, the Muslim community, or
1,000 other communities?
You can't make that claim with
a straight face.
Any Democrat that continues to go
is basically saying I secretly
don't like gay people or
Muslims either.
And I get to pretend that I do
while actually going and
holding hands with these guys and
giving them credibility that they
use in America and abroad to make
sure they pass anti-gay laws and
discriminate in a horrible way.
I love that we broke these stories,
and I don't think any Democrat
should ever go to that event again.