USAID: The Truth & Lies (When Did Reality Stop Mattering?)

In this in-depth episode, we analyze a video of the 'Doge' meeting with the USAID team. The discussion tackles the misuse of funds, with millions allocated for controversial programs like promoting LGBT rights and atheism in countries with opposing cultures, and even alleged inefficiencies and cases of funds being diverted to terrorist organizations. The episode delves into the broader implications of USAID's spending, and examines arguments from both sides of the debate. We also explore the impact of these spending practices on U.S. relations with other countries, and the potential cultural and diplomatic fallout. Tune in for a thorough breakdown of how USAID's budget is being used, or misused, and what it could mean for the future of U.S. foreign aid.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): [00:00:00] We found a video of the Doge meeting with USAID's team.

Speaker: Give us a little more information surrounding the deficits that you're running this year.

Speaker 2: Ooh, gosh. We don't really like to talk about money. We find it a little gauche.

Speaker 3: This is a budget meeting.

Speaker 2: Well, most of our files are in these boxes if you really want to take a look at how much

Speaker: that we've spent.

Why don't we just dig in and see what we're up against?

Speaker 2: Yes, and thank you. We really appreciate your help.

Speaker: Are you tipping me?

Speaker 2: Is that a hundred? Euros?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be with you here today. We have talked about the USAID controversy, but I hadn't had a time to do the deep dive into both sides of the argument before this into the specifics because you see a lot of crazy numbers being thrown out there.

And honestly, if you've just been watching white wing media, some of these numbers have inaccuracies or misconceptions in the way they're presented. Others, when you dig into them, are even crazier than you [00:01:00] thought they were on a surface level.

Simone Collins: Okay, because, yeah, my default here as a listener is Okay, everything I'm hearing is a little exaggerated.

It's not exactly that bad, but it's bad. And you're saying that actually, some of it's even worse? Some of it's dramatically worse, some of it's

Malcolm Collins: dramatically less bad.

Okay.

And, and if I'm gonna start with just one that's dramatically less bad. Okay, yes. It's a story about the U. S. Government funding media organizations like the 4 million to the New York Times, the 8 million to Politico.

If you look at this there was a few sort of misconceptions that are bundled in the way this is presented. It's presented as if this is only coming from USAID, which actually isn't true. , the money that came from USAID, for example, last year for Politico was 25, 000. Now, when I hear 25, 000 and I hear this is for the special subscription.

Keep in mind, this isn't for like the public subscription, like premium business

Simone Collins: subscription with like

Malcolm Collins: analysts. Similar to what you would get was like God, what was that report that I used to read?

Simone Collins: They had like, I think many people who went [00:02:00] to

Malcolm Collins: business schools used to work for them.

I was thinking of the Stratford report, which costs like a thousand dollars a year depending on what subscription you're using.

But they're like

Simone Collins: anything I'm thinking about Bloomberg subscriptions and Bloomberg terminals at business schools that I went to, and those were like, really expensive.

It was such a big deal to have a Bloomberg. It's

Malcolm Collins: a waste of government money, but I do not think that they were explicitly paying for story. It was premium

Simone Collins: subscription. So they were supporting the organizations though.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. We weren't using the full. They could definitely go back and renegotiate, but also the, the, for example, the numbers cited like the 8 million were in the one year, right?

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: Another part of the story that I've seen reported in a few places that is just a complete fabrication based on a manipulated video Uh is that some celebrities were paid by USAID to go to the Ukraine To attempt to improve the US public's opinion of Zelensky That did not happen. Those celebrities went on their own money or were using UN money

Malcolm Collins: So this is me saying some of this stuff [00:03:00] is less bad than we thought it was. Others where they will say something like the 8, the well, we'll get to that later. Actually, I'm not going to get to any of that. The first thing I actually wanted to go into was, was two points in this one. I want to read an article about the way the left is framing this and the way the left is freaking out about this that I think was written about by the woman who did that freak out about us.

Just yesterday for salon she published to her like private blue sky in an unsearchable way. She does these like images. So they're really hard to find. Cause after I saw this the first time it took me forever to find it again. But the second, and I really, I want to get ahead of this is the argument.

for USAID. Because I think the argument for USAID, before we get into all the ridiculousness, just to steel man it, is on its face a really, really bad argument.

Simone Collins: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: why? So the pragmatic argument for USAID is that, look, you've got China doing soft power in places like Africa. Africa is where the majority of the USAID money was going.

Keep in mind this is [00:04:00] 50 billion a year that they're getting. And when people are like, Oh, Elon's like an unelected person. Well, these people are, I didn't vote for this stuff that USAID is doing. And we'll get to it. It's crazy. It's crazy. But they're like, this is building us good relations with Africa to help fight China.

Right. And I'm like. No, it's not. Are you out of your mind? China is going in getting influential government officials. You can interview people on the ground. We've been in secret meetings where we talk with government officials who have like gotten reports from what's happening in Africa. Africa does not trust the U.

S. They do not like when people just walk into the community or like I got the shots. Just take the shots. Stop asking questions. There is not a belief that these organizations are doing well by them. They're just attempting to force things on them. And you'll see with all this like LGBT stuff, all this promoting atheism.

Yes, they literally tried to promote atheism in a non atheist country. This is pissing off the local people. This is not endearing us to these local people. Maybe in [00:05:00] the past USAID had some things where they were like helping our relations with people, but not today.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's funny how my impression overwhelmingly, especially of U.

S. based aid work in Africa, for example, is just blanket suspicion of it, conspiracy theories. You're trying to measure us. You're trying to sterilize us. You're trying to poison us. I, yeah, and that's the thing. It's like, I imagine that there is actually a lot of like measurement and research being done on populations in these areas.

So I mean, like, yeah, I've, I've never thought of it is, is getting us ahead. I always thought of it as making ma