Trump did that, not Elon. The president is the only one with the power to cut that aid. Sure, he was the "face" of it but Trump signed the EOs

Elon proposed it and implemented it. Yes, Trump signed off on it but by that logic no one in the Trump administration is guilty of anything other than Trump himself, which we all know is not true.

Elon actually bragged about destroying USAID on Twitter.

"We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead."

This is the richest man in the world being GLEEFUL abut destroying an organization that helps the poorest people in the world. Musk is basically Ebeneezer Scrooge.

In an interview when asked about it he insisted their was vast amounts of fraud in USAID.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886307316804263979?lang=en

MrBeast did more for people in Africa than USAID ever did. The only thing USAID tents were used for was filming ISIS videos.

Liar.

USAID was a pretty evil organization that was founded and used to bribe warring organizations under the guise of humanitarianism.

Whatever USAID is guilty of, it is indisputable that thousands of people died from aid being suddenly cut off without a tapering period. You can find many news articles talking to people on the ground that confirm this.

What does "bribe warring organizations " even mean?

The money was ostensibly used for noble purposes but usually ended up funding unsavory characters or organizations that are actually at cross purposes with stated US goals. A lot of humanitarian aid we send to the Middle Eastfor example, ends up in the hands of terrorists.[1]

1. https://oig.usaid.gov/node/7283

> A lot of humanitarian aid ... ends up in the hands of terrorists.

Which you "prove" by linking to a story how $9 million was "diverted" (although the person responsible was caught and charged) out of a total of $12 billion.

That's 9 parts of 12 thousand or 0.075% that you are describing as "a lot".

If you think that is the only instance of fraud you are deluding yourself.

It's your story - it's up to you to demonstrate the scale of loss.

So far all you have demonstrated is that US AID loses less aid money than CBH loses in grain to parrots each year.

If you think think that millions of tonnes of grain should be not transported because less than 1% is eaten by parrots then you're committed to starving millions of food.

Please provide more examples.

Here you go, from a five second Google search: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/usaid-official-and-three-corp...

There are others but I suspect there is no quantity or quality of examples that would change your mind.

Keep in mind that the fraud that is discovered and prosecuted is usually only a small fraction of what actually exists.

Evidence from the same corrupt administration that illegally destroyed USAID is not valid.

Thank you for confirming my suspicion that no evidence can convince you.

Valid Evidence can convince me but I've seen first hand that the Trump administration gleefully and shamelessly lies.

All politicians lie. They also tell the truth when it’s convenient and serves their political goals.

What makes you think this is the Trump administration lying about fraud versus them shining a light on actually fraudulent organization that you believe was doing a good job?

You tell me: what kind of Valid Evidence would convince you one way or the other?

"All politicians lie." This is a stupid thought terminating cliche Trump supporters endlessly repeat because in fact Trump lies far more than any politician I have ever seen in my 49 years of life. He lies so much I'm not even sure he can tell the difference between his lies and reality.

"What makes you think this is the Trump administration lying about fraud"

Because they lie constantly about absolutely everything.

"what kind of Valid Evidence would convince you one way or the other?"

Evidence that comes from people not involved with destroying USAID.

It was formed during the cold war to mingle in the proxy wars. We sent guns to the militias, and basically bribed towns and villages (by selective donations) to come to the USA's side. It's basically a mechanism to pay off warlord bribe demands.

It had the side effect of preventing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people from starvation and disease

Alternatively, it had the effect of impoverishing those same people by destroying any incentive to figure out how to produce their own food.

This is extremely stupid reasoning.

USAID did that also

It was definitely a mixed blessing, but I had a close relative (a local, not an American) who worked with them in some poor countries for some years. The verdict was, yes, it's pretty clearly a CIA front, but they also did some real and serious humanitarian work.

The man who fires the gun is just as culpable as the man who makes the plan. And boy, did Musk enjoy playing the executioner! He acted with gleeful, reckless abandon and gloated about “taking a chainsaw” to USAID. And as I recall, they only shoved Rubio in front of the cameras after Musk's illegal rampage already happened, as a sort of fig leaf.

That did not happen…

It did. Go ask your LLMs about it if you don't believe me.

Confirmed. Those numbers come from models and estimates but are not supported by anything that actually happened on the ground. Funding was transferred to the state department.

It looks like you're pretty bad at prompting. Here, let me help you out: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2026/07/how-pulitzer-final...

(I literally just asked Gemini "how many deaths are verified to be caused directly by the sudden shutdown of usaid?" to find some articles I had read featuring actual journalists tracking deaths on the ground.)

This is literally an interview that doesn't even list a number with a source. The one number it lists is a self-declared estimate of 700k deaths of which it sources three (3).

No seriously, this actually didn't happen. That one website is a "model" and simply doesn't account at all for the fact that most of the critical parts of USAID were picked up by other US aid programs.

Yes, it fucking happened. These people have names and reputable journalists on the ground talked to the grieving family members of the deceased: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2026/07/how-pulitzer-final..., https://www.propublica.org/series/the-end-of-aid

I have read multiple other articles to the same effect from different publications. Aid got cut off instantly, people could not access medicine and food that they needed, and people died. Horribly.

Get out of your bubble before you destroy your soul.

Yes, people died. People did not die at the scale reported.

Seriously my dude, this is not a hill to die on.

Please by all means! I was behind the 700k number for months before I read the fine print and the SA mortality stats. Please give me better data.

I dedicated a deep research agent to researching this last night. There's no formal data backing up the assertion.

It's all estimates based on a model that projected what would happen, which has been circulated by numerous publications with inflammatory headlines. The goal is likely to create your exact reaction.

If you'd like to try it yourself, use a deep research skill modeled after Karpathy's approach tell it to fully investigate the claim. Assume all sources of journalism from any outlet have a political bias and draw conclusion only from verifiable primary source data.