Barack Obama and George W. Bush have united with staffers of USAID to slam Donald Trump, calling the DOGE-assisted dismantling of the agency a ‘colossal mistake.’
Monday was the last day of independence for the six-decade-old humanitarian and development organization, created by President John F. Kennedy as a peaceful way of promoting U.S. national security by boosting goodwill and prosperity abroad.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered USAID – which Trump infamously called a ‘left-wing scam’ – absorbed into the State Department on Tuesday.
The former presidents and U2 singer and activist Bono spoke with thousands in the USAID community in a videoconference, which was billed as a closed-press event to allow political leaders and others privacy for sometimes angry and often teary remarks.
They expressed their appreciation for the thousands of USAID staffers who have lost their jobs and life’s work.
Their agency was one of the first and most fiercely targeted for government-cutting by the president and his billionaire ally Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency, with staffers abruptly locked out of systems and offices and terminated by mass emailing.
Trump claimed the agency was run by ‘radical left lunatics’ and rife with ‘tremendous fraud.’ Musk called it ‘a criminal organization.’
Obama, speaking in a recorded statement, offered assurances to the aid and development workers, some listening from overseas.
Barack Obama and George W. Bush united to slam Donald Trump in a farewell Monday with staffers of USAID, with Obama calling the DOGE-assisted dismantling of the agency ‘a colossal mistake’
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered USAID – which Trump (pictured) infamously called a ‘left-wing scam’ – absorbed into the State Department on Tuesday
‘Your work has mattered and will matter for generations to come,’ he told them.
Obama has largely kept a low public profile during Trump´s second term and refrained from criticizing the monumental changes that Trump has made to U.S. programs and priorities at home and abroad.
‘Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it´s a tragedy. Because it´s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world,’ Obama said.
He credited USAID with not only saving lives, but being a main factor in global economic growth that has turned some aid-receiving countries into U.S. markets and trade partners.
The former Democratic president predicted that ‘sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed.’
Asked for comment, the State Department said it would be introducing the department´s foreign assistance successor to USAID, to be called America First, this week.
‘The new process will ensure there is proper oversight and that every tax dollar spent will help advance our national interests,’ the department said.
USAID had provided over 40 per cent of global humanitarian funding until Trump returned to the White House in January.
The former presidents and U2 singer and activist Bono (pictured) spoke with thousands in the USAID community in a videoconference
Two weeks into his second term, Trump’s then-close advisor Elon Musk (pictured) said he had put the agency ‘through the woodchipper’
But two weeks into his second term, Trump’s then-close advisor and former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, announced that they had put the agency ‘through the woodchipper’.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio then revealed the sweeping cuts in March, saying that 5,200 of the 6,200 USAID programs had been stopped.
At the time it was slashed, USAID represented 0.3 percent of all US federal spending.
After USAID was gutted, several other major donors including Germany, the UK and France followed suit in announcing plans to slash their foreign aid budgets.
USAID oversaw programs around the world, providing water and life-saving food to millions uprooted by conflict in Sudan, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere.
They also sponsored the ‘Green Revolution’ that revolutionized modern agriculture and curbed starvation and famine, preventing disease outbreaks, promoting democracy, and providing financing and development that allowed countries and people to climb out of poverty.
Bush, who also spoke in a recorded message, went straight to the cuts in a landmark AIDS and HIV program started by his Republican administration and credited with saving 25 million lives around the world.
Bipartisan blowback from Congress to cutting the popular President´s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, helped save significant funding for the program. But cuts and rule changes have reduced the number getting the life-saving care.
Some people lay tributes which read ‘RIP USAID’ in February this year after the Trump administration signaled their intention to gut the programs
‘You´ve showed the great strength of America through your work – and that is your good heart,´´ Bush told USAID staffers.
‘Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you,’ he said.
Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, former Colombian President Juan Manual Santos and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield also spoke to the staffers.
So did humanitarian workers, including one who spoke of the welcome appearance of USAID staffers with food when she was a frightened 8-year-old child in a camp for Liberian refugees.
A World Food Program official vowed through sobs that the U.S. aid mission would be back someday.
Bono, a longtime humanitarian advocate in Africa and elsewhere, was announced as the ‘surprise guest,’ in shades and a cap.
He jokingly hailed the USAID staffers as ‘secret agents of international development’ in acknowledgment of the down-low nature of Monday´s unofficial gathering of the USAID community.
Bono spoke passionately as he recited a poem he had written to the agency and its gutting.
He spoke of children dying of malnutrition, in a reference to people – millions, experts have said – who will die because of the U.S cuts to funding for health and other programs abroad.
‘They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,’ Bono said.
‘It’s not left-wing rhetoric to feed the hungry, heal the sick. If this isn’t murder, I don’t know what is.’
