Marco Rubio: ‘I’m the Acting Director of USAID’
“And we owe the American people the assurances that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the press he is acting director of USAID.
Transcript:
RUBIO: Well, look, I mean, my frustration with USAID goes back to my time in Congress. It’s a completely unresponsive agency. It’s supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so.
The functions of USAID, there are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue that are going to be part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy. I said very clearly during my confirmation hearing that every dollar we spend and every program we fund that will be aligned with the national interest of the United States. And USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that and deciding that there’s somehow a global charity separate from the national interest. These are taxpayer dollars.
And so I’m very troubled by these reports that they’ve been unwilling to cooperate with people who are asking simple questions about what does this program do? Who gets the money? Who are our contractors? Who’s funded? And that sort of level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct a sort of mature and serious review that I think forne writ large.
We’re spending taxpayer money here. These are not donor dollars. These are taxpayer dollars. And we owe the American people the assurances that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest.
And so far, a lot of the people that work at USAID have just simply refused to cooperate.
REPORTER: Are you currently in charge of USAID?
RUBIO: I’m the acting Director of USAID. I’ve delegated that authority to someone, but I stay in touch with him. And again, our goal was to go in and align our foreign aid to the national interest.
But if you go to mission after mission, embassy after embassy around the world, you will often find that in many cases, USAID is involved in programs that run counter to what we’re trying to do in our national strategy with that country or with that region that cannot continue.
USAID is not an independent, non governmental entity. It is an entity that spends taxpayer dollars and it needs to spend it as the statute says in alignment with the policy directives that they get from the secretary of state, the National Security Council and the president. And it’s been 20 or 30 years where people have tried to reform it.
"I'm the acting director of USAID."
— Secretary of State Marco Rubio pic.twitter.com/F1RR9TY9PL
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) February 3, 2025
Leslie wrote about the USAID going dark last week after DOGE started to audit the agency.
The headquarters closed on Monday. The administration placed at least two senior staffers on leave who did not comply with President Donald Trump pausing foreign aid.
Leslie included X posts from Elon Musk that show what DOGE found during the audit.
It’s disgusting.
USAID has been paying media organizations to publish their propaganda https://t.co/L3rXRt3yxy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025
Good question https://t.co/c2b3W7gtL4
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025
Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people? https://t.co/YVwyKA7ifs
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025
Leslie wrote:
In 2013, EcoHealth Alliance received a three-year, $2 million grant from USAID to address land use alteration as a driver of disease emergence and climate change in Asia.
In other words, a non-governmental organization (NGO) reaped millions in our tax dollars in the name of “science” using two popular globalist phrases: “disease emergence” and “climate change.”
—
Furthermore, EcoHealth Alliance was also part of USAID’s PREDICT program, which ran for 10 years prior to 2019, focusing on identifying and increasing capacity to respond to new and emerging disease threats…like the ones it created.
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Comments
Secretary Rubio — acting head of USAID — is merely “very troubled” by the reports?!
That is what you say to reporters in diplo speak.
Especially when you’ve been up to your eyeballs in what’s been going on, and hope you can get away with doing nothing about it, for fear that your partners in crime will rat you out.
😂😂😂 ass 🤡 😂
We’re gonna need a bigger cup for all these sweet, saaaaaaweeeeeeet liberal tears that will fall the next 8 years of Trumps Presidency 😂😂
I’m not lamenting the demise of USAID; I’m saying that Sec’y Rubio had guilty knowledge of its dealings. He wasn’t confirmed 99-0 because the Uniparty thought he’d squeal.
The fate of USAIDS is in the hands of data wonks, not Rubio.
How has he been up to his eyeballs in it?
Here’s a partial list of Rubio’s committee memberships in the Senate:
Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
Select Committee on Intelligence (Ranking Member)
Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on State Department and USAID Management, International Operations, and Bilateral International Development.
Hence his statement that people have been trying to inquire into it for decades and been rebuffed. It wasn’t until he was able to fire people and put others in charge that he was able to find out what was going on there.
What crimes has Rubio committed?
Be specific.
I didn’t say he’d committed crimes. I said he’s been up to his eyeballs in what’s been going on with USAID, and that he has guilty knowledge of it. See the list of Rubio’s Senate committee memberships that I provided (above) to GWB.
Moonmouth: o rly? What does this then mean?
“…for fear that your partners in crime will rat you out.”
You don’t have a shred of proof that Rubio either committed crimes (as you insinuate here) or has “guilty knowledge” of anything.
You’re just not very good at this, are you.
To steves59: “Partners in crime” is just an expression.
Yeah, sorry. He’s produced a damned good explanation:
“my frustration with USAID goes back to my time in Congress. It’s a completely unresponsive agency. It’s supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so.”
Trying to stick him in the driver’s seat isn’t going to be easy.
How could Rubio possibly be “up to his eyeballs” in USAID, with which he has never had any connection until two weeks ago?
And if he were somehow “up to his eyeballs” in it, why would he now shut it down and expose it all?
It’s obvious that he knew nothing at all about any of this until this week. He may long have suspected that there’s something foul going on, but he would not have had any knowledge of what.
You like Dem grift operations, dontcha?
The Feds have some onerous laws on the books about defrauding the Federal Government. AG Pam Bondi and Secretary of State Marco Rubio can come down on individuals like a ton of pallets of cash.
Just a ton? How about a mountain the size of Everest?
We fund things like cowgirl museums in Jakarta. Just look at the US budget overseas spending items. It is ridiculous. Trump is going to have to tell Congress to get rid of this crap.
Can we stop funding leftist NGO’s pretending to be “voter information” or GOTV efforts??
Or we could simply stop funding ALL of the NGO and every so called ‘Charity’ along with anything else that is a responsibility of another political jurisdiction. If an NGO, ‘Charity’, State, County, municipality or another Nation thinks doing ABC is good idea then they can fund it themselves.
The real issue is capture of the institutions and corruption. The only sure way to print taxpayer funds being used for dumbass things by these NGO/Charities is cut them off entirely. Individuals in their capacity as private Citizens can voluntarily send those NGO/Charities some $ if they wish to support those causes. Leave the rest of us alone.
Absolutely right! Lower the BOOM!!!
I think Rubio was a great pick for SoS, but, admittedly, he has a huge task ahead, cleaning up the massive, stinking piles of doo-doo that have been lining the halls of the State Department for decades.
Now add in every government agency, fed, state, county, & city, and all NGOs and that is a Gulf of America sized load of schj*t!
What I heard was USAID was created from a Presidential EO. So Trump could kill it when ever he realized it was created under an EO and then just write an EO to kill it. Congressman Mast said that toward the end of Biden’s Admin that his committee, which oversees State Dept, called in all Career people to talk about what they do and their spending in their assignments but only 2 would come in. Per Mast this upset them badly as they control the money to State and USAID. They gave this to DOGE and Rubio to go after the people inside the agencies.
Refusing to report to Congress seems like an easy firing offense.
Samantha Power @PowerUSAID twitter account ist kaput. She resigned 20 January. Her personal account is still active.
She’s admired and popular on the far left / old school literati / nevertrumpers. She probably has an Ivy League job lined up.
What kind of mental defect causes people to expect that something that has been going on for decades, with the blessing — if not encouragement — of the administration at the time can be stopped and redirected in a couple of weeks. The rot in these places runs deep.
Maybe Rubio was aware while in Congress, but there he was but one vote, now he is the boss. He IS the vote.
Luckily, Washington DC comes already equipped with its own healthy river… and a Corps of Engineers perfectly capable of diverting it.
From Liz Cheney to Barack Obama, a lot of people still don’t appreciate how much of America’s political aristocracy class grew up in USAID families
https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1886845222451069369
Wow. Really.
Mr. Secretary, please investigate every amount sent out by USAID to identify corruption and conflict with federal laws, then refer charges to AG Bondi for prosecution.
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