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The president Donald Trump lashed out at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has just come under the control of the State Department.
"I love the concept, but they turned out to be radical left lunatics. The concept is good, but what's important is the people," he stated to the FOX network in his office.
The agency controlled the funds allocated for grants abroad and international cooperation, but the Trump administration has just dismantled it, claiming that it aims to align foreign aid with the national interests of the United States.
"The United States is tired of being scammed. That’s why we have a debt of 36 trillion dollars. We have it for a reason: because we make bad deals with everyone, and we no longer allow that," the president emphasized.
The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio has assumed the position of acting director of USAID this Monday.
Their employees received an email urging them to stay home after the agency's website and social media accounts were disabled over the weekend. The building housing their headquarters was sealed off with yellow tape on Monday morning.
Elon Musk, who promised to help Donald Trump cut public spending, attacked USAID, calling it a "criminal organization."
"USAID is a bunch of worms. There are no apples. And when there are no apples, you just have to get rid of everything. That's why it needs to be eliminated. There's no fixing it," he wrote on X.
This is an independent agency of the Government, with over 60 years of service and around 10,000 employees, which received a budget of 50 billion dollars in 2023.
In the Cuban context, its destruction has serious consequences for the independent press and NGOs that received funding from the agency to promote democracy and human rights on the Island.
According to a report by EFE, Marco Rubio stated that USAID suffers from an endemic problem of refusing to align its projects with U.S. foreign policy interests and claimed that its employees are "insubordinating."
"Every dollar we spend, every program we fund must align with the national interest of the U.S., and USAID has a history of ignoring that and deciding that, somehow, they are a global charitable organization separate from the national interest," he stated.
"If you travel from mission to mission and from embassy to embassy around the world, you will often find that in many cases, USAID is involved in programs that contradict what we are trying to achieve in our national strategy," he added.
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