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Obama, Bush and Bono bid a fond farewell to USAID [1]

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Date: 2025-07-03

On Monday, in a video conference, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and U2 singer Bono, said some inspiring words to USAID workers on their last day at USAID, which is now officially shut down.

Supposedly there was leaked video that Associated Press has, but It's not in their article or on a YouTube search.

Bono read a poem that had him crying. I can't find the poem, either.

Obama and Bush appeared on pre-recorded videos. We at least have quotes from the event.

Created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, USAID has been saving lives with medicine and food, until Elon Musk and Donald Trump decided it was a waste of money to help the rest of the world not as fortunate as us. People are already dying of starvation and disease because there is no one to fill the gap. Expect a country like China to jump in to gain influence over another country. That's what they have done over and over with providing money to build infrastructure. This will bolster their world reputation that we have lost. Until that happens, Musk and Trump will be responsible for the death of millions. We need a new name for these deaths. Holocaust is already taken. Neglectnation was the best I came up with on the spot.

George W. Bush started PEPFAR, President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. This one program has saved millions of lives and was implemented by USAID, the State Department and the CDC.

George said in the video conference, "You showed the great strength of America through your work --- and that is your good heart. Is it in our national interests that 25 million who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you."

National interest is national security. Trump, Musk and the Republicans have no idea what they've done, or if they do, they just don't care. They do so much evil in the name of national security.

Obama said, "Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it's a tragedy. Because it's some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world... sooner or later leaders on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed."

I wish that was true. The leaders of the Republican side of the aisle don't care at all. All they care about right now is the Big Ugly Bill that will destroy any vestiges of compassion left in the US government.

Bono was billed as a surprise guest, but he seems to have spoken the most. He called the USAID staffers "secret agents of international development." He then read the poem, which was about the agency and the children that would die from malnutrition and starvation because of Donald Trump. "They called you crooks, when you were the best of us."

In March, Bono said, "The bludgeoning of PEPFAR and USAID, one of the most eloquent expressions of American values ever created, might be America's most spectacular act of self-sabotage in generations. US development assistance had its flaws, as it's recipients often pointed out, but it gets as close to poetry as policy gets."

In May, Bono said, "There's food rotting in boats and warehouses. There is 50,000 tons of food. The people who knew the codes --- who were responsible for distributing the aid --- were fired. That's not America is it? To destroy, to vandalize, it felt like with glee, that these life support systems were being pulled out of the walls. [an aide worker said] 'We don't have the funds, we have to choose which child to pull off IVs' it just seems to me, I don't know if evil is too strong a word, but what we know about pure evil is that it rejoices in the deaths, in the squandering of human life --- particularly children. It actually rejoices in it. And whether it's incompetence, whether it's unintended consequences, it's not too late for the people."

Yes, the dismantling of USAID is pure evil. It is squandering human life, especially children. They're the ones to go first from starvation and disease.

Trump claimed the agency was run by "radical left lunatics." Elon Musk called it a "criminal organization." What Marco Rubio said, at length, was worse. Not going to even quote him.

Obama called the dismantling of USAID a "colossal mistake. Your work has mattered, and it will matter for generations to come."

Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, former Colombian President Juan Manual Santos, and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield also spoke, along with humanitarian workers with personal stories. A World Food Program official vowed, while sobbing, that the US aid mission would be back someday.

USAID, Voice of America and the other elements of the US Agency for Global Media, were the two face-forward agencies that made us respected around the world, appreciated around the world. Voice of America has become an outlet for One America News, after Kari Lake got rid of actual unbiased news feeds from Reuters and Associated Press. There is still hope for a recovery in 3 years, if there is still an audience, after deciding what they're listening to and seeing is propaganda.

USAID is totally gone. It could be recreated, but not under the Trump administration. Will the void be filled by other countries? Probably by China. Maybe another country with so much money they don't know what to do with it, like Saudi Arabia.

In the meantime, people we were helping will suffer and die. With Musk, the richest man in the world took from the poorest in the world.

With Trump, the stupidest and cruelest man in the world, ended an agency that did so much good around the world. He will take us out of every United Nations effort to help the third world countries Trump calls "sh*thole countries." He has already stopped support of UNRWA, the agency that helped Palestinian refugees and distributed aid in Gaza, because there may have been a dozen Hamas aligned people in it. He will take us out of the World Health Organization. He signed an executive order on January 20th to do just that. The official withdraw date is January 23rd, 2026.

Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bono knew the good USAID did. It was good of them to let its workers know that they were appreciated and had done a world of good. It could be a good world again.

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