Musk says USAID to be shut down, ‘beyond repair’
Musk says USAID to be shut down, ‘beyond repair’
Elon Musk, who Donald Trump has assigned to lead a federal cost-cutting panel, said the US president agrees that USAID should be shut down.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who is heading US President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government, gave an update on the effort early on Monday, saying they were working to shut down the US foreign aid agency USAID.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, discussed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a Monday social media talk on X, which he also owns. Trump has assigned Musk to lead a federal cost-cutting panel.
The conversation, which included former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Republican senators Joni Ernst and Mike Lee, began with Musk saying they were working to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
“It’s beyond repair,” Musk said, adding that Trump agrees it should be shut down.
On Sunday, it was reported that the Trump administration had removed two top security officials at USAID during the weekend after they tried to stop representatives from Musk’s DOGE from gaining access to restricted parts of the building, three sources said.
The website of USAID appeared to still be offline on Saturday and some users could not access it on Sunday. USAID has a staff of more than 10,000 people.
Speaking more broadly about cutting US expenses and fraud, Musk estimated the Trump administration can cut US$1 trillion from the US deficit next year.
Musk did not offer any evidence to support his fraud claim or explain how he reached the amount of US$1 trillion.
Since taking office 11 days ago, Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.
Musk is a malignant narcissist Nazi who believes himself to be nearly a god. He is so absolutely amazing that he just knows what it takes us mere humans decades to learn.
Shut down a CIA covert operation masquerading as a charity?
Oh no...
Genuinely curious why Trump is getting rid of historically the US's most reliable source for regime change. For those who don't know, the vast majority of USAID goes strictly to opposition groups in countries the US is on bad terms with, and to the ruling govrnments and millitaries of those we are on good terms with. It's how the US maintains hegemony. Some USAID went to good people and projects, of course, but never for a second think that that was its primary purpose.
One theory I saw is that the US Imperialists have noticed many of their typical regime change attempts, such as in Bolivia and Venezuela, are failing, therefore it isn't any longer an efficient use of funds. Now the US is pivoting to more open-faced aggression via tariffs and other forms of economic warfare, sanctions, and so forth. The reason, is because US hegemony is weakening, and other countries like the PRC are becoming much better alternatives to deal with.
I'm increasingly getting the impression that the US now realizes that the unipolar moment is over, and they're basically cutting their losses in order to consolidate and retrench. The interview that Rubio gave was very telling. He openly admitted that the unipolar moment was an anomaly and there are now multiple great powers again. He also admitted in a different interview that the ability to use sanctions is coming to an end because of BRICS. This was a really good discussion on the whole thing https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/did-the-us-declare-the-end-of-the
The US will continue doing fuckery around the world to be sure, but it looks like they're pulling back to re calibrate their approach at the moment.
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. The US retreating to lick its wounds and re-establish itself as an industrial power doesn't seem entirely feasible under Monopoly Capitalism, with everything so financialized, but if the US pulls it off then I think there's a half-decent shot at genuine proletarianization within the Empire and a resurgance of Socialism as an alternative.
So some of that was probably going to daddy putin’s opposition…
Potentially. It seems the Russo-Ukrainian war is coming to a close, perhaps by Summer, though USAID and aid for Ukraine are not inherently the same thing.
Any question of why Trump does something that doesn't seem to make sense has a very simple answer. He's an idiot. And the answer to your following question is "Yes, he is."
Because that's a lot of money that isn't going to his favorite charities.
Heartbreaking: The worst person you know accidentally did something good
USAID was a tool for US imperialism. It may have done some good but the soft power was expended waging wars and committing genocide.
And now other countries like russia and china are taking up the slack.
yay, I guess?
How has China been picking up the slack? Who have they couped or invaded? Who have they sanctioned?
At worst it will be no different. The US installs fascists. Not liberal democracy, not freedom fighters, fascists. If the US were more competent the entirety of South and central America would be full of internally feuding Pinochets.
You forgot what instance you're on.
~~“It just burning money to ‘help people’, they’ve never been in the black. It’s a money sink hole. Completely useless.”
It’s a service that my tax dollars gladly pay for~~ I will not gladly pay for that same money to go into your pocket, you fucking nazi.
Edit: was clarified on the particular organization. Should wake up before reading bad news. I stand by my Nazi statement though.
The vast majority of USAID went to support regime change and help the ruling classes of those we are friendly with. A minority went to helping people. What this means, it is speculated, that the US has realized its last several attempts at regime change in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia have failed due to the emergence of alternatives, therefore it is cheaper to drop it entirely and focus on open economic warfare rather than subtle. Tarriffs, sanctions, etc.
Which would be such a laughable misreading of the economic climate lmao, in 2008 China couldn't decouple from the US and as such couldn't avoid bailing them out (by purchasing a shit ton of insolvent debt) after the bubble popped.
The messaging has been clear, this time there will be no rescue and this bubble is bigger than the one before the great depression. I understand that the bourgeoisie is running out of options in the international stage but surely there was a more subtle way than this lmao.
The vast majority of USAID went to support regime change and help the ruling classes of those we are friendly with. A minority went to helping people.
Do you have a source for that? I honestly thought that USAID was one of the very few "good" things that US was doing (although as always with imperialist countries, it was ultimately in pursuit of soft power, but I digress). I've seen many USAID-sponsored hospitals, kindergartens and museums in poor/developing countries. The numbers they themselves produce (I could only find this 2016/2017 report easily: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/foreign-assistance-agency-brief-usaid) seem to corroborate that the plurality of spending goes towards Health, with Health + Disaster Assistance being the majority. "Development Assistance" + "Transition Initiatives" + "Complex Crises Fund" (part of which is probably all the political stuff) is slightly more than a third of their spending.
The US has the largest economic bubble ever. This is a hillarious timing to start an economic warm