Authoritarian leaders around the world are applauding Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s destruction of USAID.
“In just 14 days, Donald Trump has turned the world upside down with just a few measures. In America, gender madness is over, funding for globalist Soros organizations is over, illegal migration is over, and support for the Russian-Ukrainian war is over. In other words, everything that the bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to force down our throats in recent years is over,” Hungary’s hardline President Viktor Orbán wrote on Facebook.
Orbán’s top political director, Balázs Orbán, echoed these sentiments. “Couldn’t be happier that @POTUS, @JDVance & @elonmusk are finally taking down this corrupt foreign interference machine,” he wrote on X. “Good riddance!”
Trump’s favorite Latin American strongman Nayib Bukele also chimed in. “Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up,” he wrote on X. “While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.”
And of course Russia—perhaps USAID’s biggest foreign hater— had something to say.
“Russian Deputy Security Council Chair Dmitry Medvedev wrote, “Smart move by @elonmusk, trying to plug USAID’s Deep Throat. Let’s hope notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow him whole…”
“Essentially, [USAID] was the primary transmission belt for globalism as an ideology aimed at the worldwide imposition of liberal democracy, market economics, and human rights, while dismantling sovereign states and overthrowing regimes capable of resisting this on a global scale,” the Russian far-right nationalist Alexander Dugin wrote for a right-wing Russian outlet on Monday. “The banning of USAID is a critical, fundamental move, the importance of which, as I said, cannot be overstated. This is especially true because countries like Ukraine largely depend on this agency, receiving significant funding through it. All Ukrainian media, NGOs, and ideological structures were financed by USAID.”
USAID was a far from perfect organization. But what does it mean now that all of these men with shaky human rights records (at best) are dancing on its grave?
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