Just in case you were unclear on the USAID scandal that DOGE uncovered, BlazeTV is here to offer a three minute, nuance-free summary of how it works.
Tags: BlazeTV, Budget, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Foreign Policy, fraud, NGO, USAID, video
Not defending the merits of any particular grant or whatever, but the following seems likely to me, and I’m wondering why this hasn’t been explored more:
A lot of the grants and “loans” were tied in with negotiations and deals with foreign governments to get favorable outcomes. Sounds bad, but it may not be so bad. We apparently sent money to Australian universities for research. Why would we do that? Well, maybe the U.S. was trying to get Australia to support something useful to us?
This surely goes back to the Cold War, and that, in turn, explains a lot of the trade imbalance. The U.S. had a strategic imperative: prevent the Soviet Union from (a) dominating Eurasia and (b) spreading communism and chaos around the world. All other considerations were rightly viewed through that lens. Recall that Reagan had a real battle getting missiles and other defensive measures into Europe; the Soviets were trying very hard to wreck NATO cohesion, and it was tough battle. So, Reagan (and others before him) likely went for things that were unfair in order to sustain the primary goal.
If this is true, and even if not in every particularly, surely it *is* true, then the world hasn’t changed *that* much; and Trump and future presidents will face the same choices. We want India and Vietnam and Philippines and many other countries to help us vis-a-vis China. I’m guessing, in 20 years or so, a future candidate will express astonishment at things Trump went along with, but if it works — it worked in the Cold War — why get mad?
Because USAID used to serve bipartisan anti-Communist foreign policy. Now that purpose has been suborned into spending taxpayer money to censor American citizens and bankroll the radical left.
USAID was planning to spend $21 million on funding “voter turnout” in India, a typical Soros ploy against the ruling BJP. Indians will surely miss USAID manipulating their political processes.
USAID has been spending millions over the years to increase abortions throughout Vietnam through EngenderHealth. The Vietnamese people will surely thank America for a Chinese style demographic collapse in the near future.
USAID/Philippines is in the middle of another Soros project “Enhancing Governance Accountability and Engagement” (ENGAGE), a five-year program to “improve governance”. Filipenos will surely miss USAID manipulating their political processes.
USAID makes America more enemies than friends by supporting countercultural programs all over the world.
If you’re bribing foreign governments with aid, you don’t bury it behind layers of cutouts like USAID and NGOs. At least half the point is that those actions are deniable. It’s not the fault of Washington that Borderless Medicine decided, all on their own (really!) to test new medical technology in the Congo and injured hundreds of people in the process.
Meanwhile, when State bribes the Egyptians with billions of dollars in food aid, they openly hand over the account information to their Egyptian counterparts. Nobody explicitly announces that the purpose of the bribe is to persuade Egypt to support American foreign policy, but beyond lip service nobody misunderstands what is going on.