The USAID Explained by Secretary of State - Marco Rubio

Here's two serious clips, because, you know, we can stomp on people all day long. Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, I'm liking him more and more, I have to say. I am too. I'm liking him more and more. He really, he, you know, it's like one of those things where he founds himself, it seems to me. Yes. Well, part of it, I... Go ahead. Because everybody, everybody on both sides of the aisle always assumed that, because of Marco's, little Marco, when he was little Marco, and the small hands joke, and he was going after Trump and he was running against him, they all assumed that he was pretty much like them, that he was an old Republican. Yeah. Old-fashioned Republican. He's not turning out to be that way. He's turning out to be a radical Republican, Trumpist-type Republican, and he handles it so beautifully, it's a phenomenon. Yes. And, of course, he's still not to be trusted. Can't trust anybody. But... I agree. He did an interview, I think this was Fox, and they asked him, because now he's the acting director of USAID, and he had a very clear, concise overview of what's going on and how it's corrupt and rotten, and here it is. So, you're now the head of USAID, the head of Doge, Elon Musk, called USAID a criminal organization and added that it is time for it to die. Do you agree with that? Let me walk you through the history of this agency. This is good. He knows the history. I like this. I've dealt with it for 14 years in the United States Senate. It was created as a way of doing humanitarian assistance in the world, separate from the State Department at the time, but it said you have to take policy direction from the Secretary of State, the National Security Council, the White House, and all elements of government. They have basically evolved into an agency that believes that they're not even a U.S. government agency, that they are a global charity, that they take the taxpayer money and they spend it as a global charity, irrespective of whether it is in the national interest or not. By the way, one of the few people these days who uses the word correctly, instead of saying irregardless, he says irrespective. He gets a point. Gets a point for that. Irrespective of whether it is in the national interest or not in the national interest. One of the most common complaints you will get if you go to embassies around the world from State Department officials and ambassadors and the like is USAID is not only not cooperative, they undermine the work that we're doing in that country. They are supporting programs that upset the host government for whom we're trying to work with on a broader scale and so forth. So they're completely unresponsive. They just don't consider that they work for the U.S. They just think they're a global entity and that their master is the globe and not the United States. And that's not what the statute says and that's not sustainable. The President put a pause on all foreign aid. We found a lot of cooperation in the State Department and we have issued dozens and dozens of waivers. As we go through all the foreign aid programs in the Department of State, the ones that make sense, we issue a waiver, they go back on, we've already done it for dozens of programs. So okay, so that makes total sense, you know, oh, someone's starving, okay, we'll help those people out. But then it gets a little tricky because we know the State Department is really the huge monster and here, oh, the State Department's great. They're great. Remember, Marco Rubio has been on the Intelligence Committee for a long time, so I think he's protecting his turf here. So we're going to it at the State Department, the State Department portion of foreign aid. We find cooperation. The State Department people have been great and we're issuing waivers and we're getting input and it's working. We go to USAID, which is a big chunk of foreign aid, $40 billion or so, they're completely uncooperative. They won't tell you what the programs are, they refuse to answer questions, they try to push through payments, even after the executive order, they were still trying to push money through the system. Can it be reformed or does it need to die? Well, that was always the goal was to reform it, but now we have rank insubordination. Now we have basically an active effort to where their basic attitude is, we don't work for anyone, we work for ourselves. No agency or government can tell us what to do. So the President made me the Acting Administrator, I've delegated that power to someone who's there full time, and we're going to go through the same process at USAID as we're going through now at the State Department. I think there are some, this is not about getting rid of foreign aid, there are things that we do through USAID that we should continue to do, that makes sense, and we'll have to decide is that better through the State Department or is that better through something, a reformed USAID? That's the process we're working through. There are things that are happening at USAID that we should not be involved in funding or that we have a lot of questions about, but they're completely uncooperative, so we had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control. So we'll see. The State Department seems pretty safe and there's a lot of nonsense going on there. It's heavily intertwined with the Central Intelligence Agency.