Bush, Obama — and singer Bono — fault Trump's gutting of USAID on
agency's last day
[July 01, 2025]
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush
delivered rare open criticism of the Trump administration — and singer
Bono recited a poem — in an emotional video farewell Monday with
staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Obama called the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID “a colossal
mistake.”
Monday was the last day as an independent agency for the six-decade-old
humanitarian and development organization, created by President John F.
Kennedy as a peaceful way of promoting U.S. national security by
boosting goodwill and prosperity abroad.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered USAID absorbed into the State
Department on Tuesday.
The former presidents and Bono spoke with thousands in the USAID
community in a videoconference, which was billed as a closed-press event
to allow political leaders and others privacy for sometimes angry and
often teary remarks. Parts of the video were shared with The Associated
Press.
They expressed their appreciation for the thousands of USAID staffers
who have lost their jobs and life's work. Their agency was one of the
first and most fiercely targeted for government-cutting by President
Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk, with staffers abruptly
locked out of systems and offices and terminated by mass emailing.
Trump claimed the agency was run by “radical left lunatics” and rife
with “tremendous fraud.” Musk called it “a criminal organization.”
Obama, speaking in a recorded statement, offered assurances to the aid
and development workers, some listening from overseas.
"Your work has mattered and will matter for generations to come,” he
told them.
Obama has largely kept a low public profile during Trump’s second term
and refrained from criticizing the monumental changes that Trump has
made to U.S. programs and priorities at home and abroad.
“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy. Because it’s some of
the most important work happening anywhere in the world,” Obama said. He
credited USAID with not only saving lives, but being a main factor in
global economic growth that has turned some aid-receiving countries into
U.S. markets and trade partners.
The former Democratic president predicted that ”sooner or later, leaders
on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed."
Asked for comment, the State Department said it would be introducing the
department’s foreign assistance successor to USAID, to be called America
First, this week.
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Former President Barack Obama speaks at the Obama Foundation
Democracy Forum, Dec. 5, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley,
File)
“The new process will ensure there is proper oversight and that
every tax dollar spent will help advance our national interests,”
the department said.
USAID oversaw programs around the world, providing water and
life-saving food to millions uprooted by conflict in Sudan, Syria,
Gaza and elsewhere, sponsoring the “Green Revolution” that
revolutionized modern agriculture and curbed starvation and famine,
preventing disease outbreaks, promoting democracy, and providing
financing and development that allowed countries and people to climb
out of poverty.
Bush, who also spoke in a recorded message, went straight to the
cuts in a landmark AIDS and HIV program started by his Republican
administration and credited with saving 25 million lives around the
world.
Bipartisan blowback from Congress to cutting the popular President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, helped save
significant funding for the program. But cuts and rule changes have
reduced the number getting the life-saving care.
“You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work — and
that is your good heart,’’ Bush told USAID staffers. “Is it in our
national interests that 25 million people who would have died now
live? I think it is, and so do you," he said.
Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, former Colombian
President Juan Manual Santos and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield also spoke to the staffers.
So did humanitarian workers, including one who spoke of the welcome
appearance of USAID staffers with food when she was a frightened
8-year-old child in a camp for Liberian refugees. A World Food
Program official vowed through sobs that the U.S. aid mission would
be back someday.
Bono, a longtime humanitarian advocate in Africa and elsewhere, was
announced as the “surprise guest,” in shades and a cap.
He jokingly hailed the USAID staffers as “secret agents of
international development” in acknowledgment of the down-low nature
of Monday’s unofficial gathering of the USAID community.
Bono spoke passionately as he recited a poem he had written to the
agency and its gutting. He spoke of children dying of malnutrition,
in a reference to people — millions, experts have said — who will
die because of the U.S cuts to funding for health and other programs
abroad.
“They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,” Bono said.
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