USAID: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪

We're gonna dive in with our main story this week concerning something Donald Trump absolutely hates. And even more than finding makeup that'll match his complexion. Go to Sephora, dude.

-♪♪

It'll take ten minutes.

-♪♪

Specifically, we're gonna talk about the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. It was once described as the world's single largest humanitarian donor, providing aid in the form of disaster relief, global health,

food assistance, climate resilience, education, and much more. And when Trump returned to the White House last year, he made it clear that the agency was in his sights.

USAID, run by radical lunatics. It sounds so nice, USAID, isn't it beautiful? But it's a whole big scam. When you look at USAID, that's a, uh... that's a fraud, the whole thing is a fraud. Very little, uh... Very little being put to good use.

Okay, so set aside the irony of Donald Trump of Trump University accusing anything of being a fraud. You can't just call something a scam because you don't like it. I want to call low-rise jeans a scam. I feel like pepper pigs are fraud.

I believe radical lunatics run Jamba Juice. Liquid fruit isn't a treat, it's cough syrup at best. But even I, acknowledging my feelings, don't make any of those thoughts true. But Trump was fixated on USAID and its spending, which is a little surprising given it amounted to less than one percent of the federal budget.

Yet, Trump and Elon Musk quickly dismantled the agency, with Elon at one point proudly tweeting he'd spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. And a lot of MAGA Republicans were ecstatic about that. Right-wing influencer, Benny Johnson, even made a trip to D.C. to celebrate.

I just got into Washington, D.C. I had to see it for myself to believe it. USAID... is no more. Check it out. There we go. Got the duct tape.

Got the doors all closed off. Got everything all blacked out up there. Had to see it to believe it. The consequences of Doge. They're not effing around. I can't believe it. The, uh, the consequences of doge.

Probably the number one selfie spot in all of Washington.

That would, of course, be the Washington Monument,

-...or a cherry blossom tree, so that it looks like a dick. -...or one of those pandas at the National Zoo,

so that it looks like a dick. by posting this incredibly shitty meme.

♪ ♪

It's too steep for small children, mothers carrying babies and the sick to climb down. Now Namboza's path has gotten tougher. USAID cuts have eliminated many jobs at her clinic. As she and those who remain try to take up the slack, avoiding burnout could be as much of a challenge as getting to the isolated communities that need her help.

Holy shit! That image of her on the ladder is absolutely incredible. It's like Free Solo, except unlike Alex Honnold, she's not going out of her way to make such a big fucking deal about it. But the point is, they took what appears to be the hardest job on Earth

and somehow made it even harder.

why it happened, and who is responsible.

And then, we witness the impossible.

You're a force for good. You've created a great impression for our country and you've changed lives. I've been a big champion for a long time. Uh, enjoy this anniversary, and when it comes to USAID, uh, the best is yet to come.

Well, that's nice, isn't it? And I'm sure it motivated employees back then beyond belief. Imagine suddenly getting a message from the man who succeeded Strom Thurmond, speaking with all the enthusiasm of someone who just got paid $6.50 on Cameo. But it wasn't just Lindsey Graham. Marco Rubio was also a huge supporter, praising the agency's work on at least two dozen occasions

over more than a decade. In fact, when he was named Secretary of State, many USAID employees were hopeful, thinking he'd help to protect them. But that is not what has happened. Because this administration quickly brought USAID

to its knees. By February 1st of last year, its website had been taken down. By February 7th, almost all its 10,000 employees were placed on leave. And by mid-March, after a supposed six-week review,

83 percent of USAID programs had been terminated. And in a sign of just how thoroughly the agency had been destroyed, when there was a massive earthquake in Myanmar last March, instead of getting hundreds of U.S. rescuers, this is what happened.

Aid workers say help from the United States, at least, is nowhere to be found. No American rescue teams, no visible U.S. presence in Mandalay, no American flags on the food trucks.

The United States only sent a paltry amount of assistance. It sent only three workers, which then subsequently were fired.

It's true. We sent three workers, and then fired them while they were there. And not only is that not enough people to send to an earthquake, for what it's worth, it not only is that not enough people to send to an earthquake, for what it's worth, it is exactly the wrong number of people to send on any trip, even under the best circumstances.

Two people, sure, that's intimate, but you can both spend time alone if it's feeling tense. Four, more combinations, more vibe possibilities. Don't want a window shop in the commercial district with Casey? No problem, you can hang by the hotel pool with Leigh-Anne. But three, that is a nightmare. You're either shit-talking Tamara

for being annoying about the street food tour, or you're alone knowing that the other two are shit-talking you for being so annoying about the riverboat thing. And at this point, it is worth engaging with the arguments for dismantling USAID.

And let's start with the claim that there was, to use conservatives' favorite phrase, waste, fraud, and abuse. Elon claimed that the vast majority of the agency's spending was either wasteful or nefarious, and here is his response when Joe Rogan pressed him on that.

So, is there a way to audit all this stuff and find out, oh, these people are actually just sending food to poor people, these people are actually just sending food to poor people. These people are actually just helping people with water in third world countries. There's a way to do that and keep funding those.

Yeah, I mean, we have continued to fund things that appear to be legitimate, even with the flimsiest, if there's even the flimsiest excuse, like I just said, like, send me a picture of the thing. Like you could literally have AI generate the picture, but if you're not even willing to try to trick me... -...then we're, like, not gonna send the money. --What the fuck are you talking about?

Send me a picture? You can't treat foreign aid like it's a Grubhub delivery. And by the way, I don't even you'd have to do that either. Enough is asked of them already without making them take an awkward photo of me accepting my bag of ramen. And to address Rogan's question, there actually was an army of staffers, including auditors and lawyers, both inside the agency

and in its inspector general's office, whose job it was to track spending. And for what it's worth, one review found in the last six IG reports of USAID, 94 percent of the spending had been audited, and only .3 percent were found to have issues. And even then, half of that was reclaimed.

But even without knowing that, it's tough to take waste allegations from Elon seriously, given his Doge team seemed to have no idea what the programs they were cutting even did. ProPublica recently revealed that people at the agency watch as their brand new chief of staff

scrolls down a spreadsheet of programs, turning rows red, yellow, or green every few seconds, never asking a single question, then realizing that the red programs were slated to be cut, they frantically started editing descriptions so we'd at least know what those programs did.

And while the administration at one point insisted the programs would be spared if they were considered life-saving, just listen to this former USAID employee tell a Senate roundtable how those decisions got made.

When we kept, flagged a long list of awards that were needed for life-saving activities, we were told that the problem was the names of those awards didn't make clear that they were life-saving. Um, it didn't have the word life-saving in the name, and therefore it was very hard for the Secretary's team

to understand which awards should or should not be terminated. And so the implication was that if we had been more clear in the names that these were life-saving awards, maybe then they would have been saved.

Now, obviously, that is stupid for a thousand reasons. First, because everybody knows that names aren't usually literal descriptions of what you are getting. It's the reason that ketchup isn't called Salty Tomato Inspired Glock. Conjunctivitis isn't called Shit on Your Finger Then Touched Your Eye Disease.

And this show isn't called Facts You Read in the New Yorker 18 Months Ago with What Seems to Be a Middle-Aged Man. It's called Po license. And it is notable that for all the talk of fraud, even Jeremy Lewin, a Doge guy who eventually served as deputy administrator and COO of the agency,

and who often personally decided which programs should be axed, later admitted his team didn't find much.

You know, we talk about, people talk about fraud, right? Doge didn't find that much fraud at USAID. This is a definitional question, what is fraud? In the sense of, well, you know, maybe I defrauded you, the grant says I do X and I do Y, right? That's a very narrow conception of fraud. But is it a fraud to say you have this organisation that, you know, the New York Times has painted as feeding all sorts of, you know, poor and destitute people around the world, but in fact, a significant portion of the money

is going to pay $400,000 salaries at UC Berkeley to do climate and sort of race science research, right? Is that a fraud on the American people? I mean, I would say it kind of is.

Okay, so radicalized young Sheldon there is basically answering, did Doge find fraud with, it's a definitional question, which isn't a great look. If you ask a detective, did you find the killer? And he says, it depends how you define the words killer and find.

It would be safe to say the Tulsa Strangler is still definitely at large. As for his claim there about salaries for race science research projects, we tried to find out what the fuck he was talking about, and we couldn't. We even asked him and the State Department

for more information about it, and they didn't provide any. But if the very phrase, race science, set off alarm bells, you should know, people who knew Lewin in high school said he had a history of violent outbursts and racist remarks, and that he believed

non-white people were inherently of lower value than white people, which seems like a whole lot of words for racist, and I don't think that's a definitional issue. Now, before Lewin got that job at USAID, his position was held by a different member of the Trump administration called Pete Morocco. He actually worked there during Trump's first term, too,

and attempted to delay or halt dozens of programs, but ultimately wasn't successful. Which is why, when he came back last year, one former official said, what we're seeing right now is Pete's revenge tour. And for the record, Pete's revenge tour sounds like a band composed entirely of former

middle school football coaches who got fired because kids kept getting heat stroke, and all of whom were at the Capitol on January 6th. And I only say that because Morocco did apparently storm the Capitol on January 6th. And I only say that because Morocco did apparently storm the Capitol on January 6th. With his wife, by the way. Couple goals.

But the thing is, as eager as this administration has been to eradicate any funding it claimed was going to woke causes and singling out small individual expenditures for ridicule, it still doesn't explain wholly dismantling this agency. Because traditionally, administrations have been free to make sure foreign aid reflects their values,

whatever those values are. Just listen to the man who ran USAID under George W. Bush explain that to Congress.

When the Democrats took over, they moved the agency to the left. I moved it to the right. The Obama people actually said I was very right wing. I was the most right wing administrator in the history of the agency. And yet, the career people followed what

I wanted to do in the agency. We put heavy emphasis on economic growth. I believe in economic growth. I believe in the private sector. I believe in free markets. I believe in the private sector. I believe in free markets.

is absolutely ridiculous, okay?

and the next administration can then... Even during Trump's first term, All of which raises the question,

through a wood chipper?

who hate America, and USAID is a criminal organization.

Even that woodchipper tweet was in reply to Mike Benz.

in former FBI director Chris Wray's mouth. He also once posted about the jeans he got for his birthday. And if you're thinking, well, hold on, that doesn't seem so bad to me, I'll point out, these were the jeans. That's right, he got 9-11 jeans for his birthday. You could apparently buy those jeans online for $180.

And the reason I know that is, oh, fuck you, how little do you think of me? But it gets worse. Because Ben's apparently used to be a content creator who went by Frame Game and pushed a variety of far-right narratives, including the Great Replacement Theory, and made montages urging white viewers to unite

under the banner of race. And he is fixated

that got Elon's attention.

Mike Pence is so obsessed with, he got birthday denim merch.

And look, that is not to say there aren't small grains of truth underneath all of Benz's bullshit.

And I do not like the fact that the agency did that.

Also, as the people of Venezuela and Iran can attest, it tends to do so pretty fucking directly.

So it's not like any of those criticisms

But to hear Ben's tell it,

USAID is basically the root of all this world's problems.

And what I mean by that is USAID has infected the institutional architecture of every aspect of American society and world society.

Wow. The whole world has been Truman-showed by USAID. It's not something you expect to hear someone say on TV. At best, it's something you expect to hear them muttering on a city bus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they've infected the institutional architecture. You know what? I think I'm gonna get off here.

I know we're halfway across a bridge, but I'm pretty sure that this is my stop. It's frankly no wonder Benz took a victory lap when USAID was gutted, posting this image of himself celebrating at its grave. And at this point, you should probably see some of the damage that's been done, because it is vast.

As one expert put it, I think the best evidence that USAID works is how quickly people started dying when it went away. Now, it is hard to get exact counts on deaths, partly because these cuts have, among other things, halted data monitoring.

But, researchers have estimated over 262,000 adults and over half a million children died last year as a result of these cuts. Though I do have to tell you, Marco Rubio strongly denies claims like those.

Anybody who tells you that somehow it's the United States, if we cut a dollar, somehow we're responsible for some horrific thing that's going on in the world, is just not true. Are you standing by your contention that no one has died because the United States has cut aid?

No.

Okay, so, is he telling the truth there? Well, I would argue that the answer to that is the same as the answer to the question, are Marco Rubio's ears proportional to the size of his head? Which is to say, absolutely, demonstrably not.

And maybe the best way to rebut that is to show you some of the specific places and programs that have been impacted by these cuts. And let's start with food and nutrition assistance, which have been devastating. For instance, in Nigeria, clinics which provided

a malnutrition treatment for more than 300,000 children below the age of two were shut down at the end of July. And in Afghanistan, NGO warehouses were bare, despite 900,000 children being in desperate need of treatment for severe acute malnutrition. And it is not just cuts to the food itself.

The administration also disrupted the global supply chain that moves food for desperate people all over the world. And that means, even when the food's actually there, the ability to get it to people who need it can be gone. For instance, last summer, disruptions led to some food spoiling in a warehouse.

The Trump administration is planning to destroy a massive amount of emergency food. Some 500 metric tons, or just over a million pounds of high-energy biscuits meant to feed hungry kids in Afghanistan and Pakistan will now be incinerated that first reported

by the Atlantic we have a kind of a standard procedure that if food is expired we will be destroyed federal workers had requested approval from USA ID leadership to move the emergency food before it's spoiled but their memos went

providing life-saving medical assistance.

when USAID stopped funding the organization.

29 children in the district died of malnutrition and illness.

We've never had such a high death rate. It was catastrophic. These are deaths that we could have avoided

if funding had been maintained and we continued our activities.

Yeah, it's appalling. And it makes it even worse when you remember House Republicans literally celebrated these cuts with this shit.

♪ -♪ ♪

Yeah, it's true, you are killing a lot of people in Africa. You jib-jabbed fucks. The point is, these cuts have cost lives. And perhaps one of the clearest examples of this concerns PEPFAR, or the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. It was created

during the George W. Bush administration and is often described as one of the most successful global health programs in history. It's credited with saving 26 million lives and enabling 7.8 million babies to be born without HIV since it was created. It is as close to a miracle

as this government has ever accomplished. If I had to say one nice thing about George W. Bush,

this program would be it. that the government has ever accomplished. If I had to say one nice thing about George W. Bush,

this program would be it. And if I had to say two, I would go quiet.

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪

And while the administration will stress that PEPFAR still exists, its crucial aid delivery mechanism has been severely disrupted. As soon as the cut started last January, clinics were forced to shut their doors, essential frontline health workers were furloughed,

and community programs reaching the most vulnerable people stopped. And while PEPFAR was granted a limited waiver to implement urgent, life-saving HIV treatment services, a lot got left out of that waiver. Because while, for instance, it allowed the prevention medication PrEP

for pregnant and breastfeeding women, it didn't include it for anyone else, including those who were already on it. It also left out funding for HIV prevention more generally and most programming for orphans and vulnerable children. And a major casualty of cuts to PEPFAR

were locally-routed programs tailored to the needs of specific groups of people, like specialized clinics for sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who inject drugs. And infuriatingly, to some Republicans, that seemed to be sort of the point.

This stuff about PEPFAR, oh my God, you're gonna destroy the world. Now, there's a part of PEPFAR that deals with money for life-saving care, isn't it? Absolutely. And there's a part of PEPFOR that won't,

you look at it and you wanna say, pass me the sick bucket, isn't there? Yes, sir. And you're getting rid of the sick bucket stuff. Yes, sir. You're getting rid of $5.5 million to lesbian, gay,

bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex advocacy in Uganda. Aren't you? I can't believe we're arguing about this. I can't believe we're arguing about this.

Wow, that is some pretty homophobic stuff coming from a man wearing the single cuntiest pair of glasses I think I've ever seen. Also, for what it's worth, Well, that certainly makes one of us. But despite what Kennedy said there, cuts to PEPFAR are absolutely affecting life-saving care

and for a huge amount of people, and not just those whose lives seem to make you want to reach for the sick bucket. Even short disruptions to HIV care can be deadly and have already resulted in stories like this.

The cutoff of the medication of the HIV, Short disruptions to HIV care can be deadly and have already resulted in stories like this.

and because he couldn't afford to do so, the orphanage ran out. Without this medication, 14-year-old Migande Andrew quickly fell ill.

He got weaker and weaker every day, and, you know, lost his life in the process.

The community he loved gathering to say their goodbyes, burying him on February 21st.

That photo is absolutely gutting. And since Elon seems to genuinely want pictures of what USAID does around the world to somehow prove to him that it's worthwhile, I hope a day of that fucking ghoul's life does not go by without someone sending him that photo.

And you know, who cannot claim he didn't know the value of USAID's work, especially when it comes to HIV, Marco Rubio. Because back in 2015, while running for president, he said this.

Four and eight can make a difference when properly used. And if you ever have a chance, travel to the African continent, and you will meet people who are alive today because the American taxpayer funded antiviral HIV medications that kept them alive. It will not be easy to radicalize people who are alive

because the American taxpayer saved their lives

and the lives of their children.

That's a really good point, Marco. And that is clearly a very different Rubio back then, one who seemed to have political aspirations beyond disassociating on a couch while J.D. Vance yells at Zelensky like a kid stuck in a sleepover while his friend's parents fight.

And incredibly, I'm still only scratching the surface here. There are programs concerning treatment and prevention of cholera and neglected tropical diseases, clean water and climate resiliency, and many, many others that have also been butchered. But there is one more area I think is worth mentioning,

and that is education. Because without funding for that, there are children around the world who no longer have a safe place to learn. And while these stories may not be captured when you hear about the numbers of deaths, that does not mean the impacts aren't horrific.

Just look at this massive refugee camp in Bangladesh, populated by Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. The U.S. slashed its funding by nearly half. And just one of the consequences is that many kids no longer have a school to attend, and have been forced into dire circumstances.

There's been a sharp rise in girls being forced into prostitution, and UNICEF has estimated that cases of child marriage rose by 21 percent compared to the same period the year prior. And without school to attend, young boys like this one were suddenly forced to go to attend. Young boys like this one were suddenly forced to go to work.

Ten-year-old Mohamed Arfan spends all day selling snacks, missing the classroom where

he once felt safe. I returned home crying and my family asked, why are you crying? The school has been closed. I'm crying because of that. I will no longer be able to study in the school.

That is why I was crying. Arfan worries about being targeted by kidnappers or thieves while at work.

But he has no other option.

Yeah, it's awful. Look, what this administration has done is beyond cruel. we had to watch putting this story together.

to cheer this kind of thing on.

with the central idea being that they want local governments to take more agency over foreign aid. And honestly, I genuinely hope it works. But we have very little in the way of specifics, that had helped them deliver the aid.

was already doing. Because even if you are a sociopath,

is a good thing in and of itself, you should know,

correctly points out, is sort of in our own interest.

If we are able to prevent pandemics,

as an American citizen, you take it back there.

across the globe within a day. or carol basking knows how painfully true that is. constantly spitting out disasters, I really do.

But it is crucial not to let what they've done be forgotten.

by these cuts can be genuinely hard

to wrap your head around, the individual people aren't.

USRID was not perfect, but it was working miracles.

And this government decided to retract those miracles on purpose. This is a man-made disaster.

And when you remember these faces,

I want you to think of these two. I want you to think of these two. but we cannot let them do that.