Bulwark Takes - Elon Musk's Crusade Against the Government Threatens to Dismantle USAID

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Sam Stein is joined by Alex Ward, National Security Reporter for the Wall Street Journal, to discuss what happened today at USAID, how Elon Musk and his team took over, and with Marco Rubio appointed acting administrator, what happens from here.

Mc-Crispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag. Dip it in your McFlurry. Your dip is your business. Mc-Crispy strips at McDonald's. Hey guys, me Sam Stein.

I am back. Luckily, I'm joined by Alex Ward of the Wall Street Journal. Used to be my bud at Politico. He is, what do do you what's your formal title your national security reporter you got something else no national security reporter the wall street that's me they didn't give you like a senior or like a executive national security reporter you just got plain old national security reporter um you know grand mullah that's more like it okay we're we're fun, but we're going to talk about something serious.

We're going to try to unpack what's happening at USAID. First of all, is it still, as far as you know, is it still in existence? Does it exist? Yes. Actually, you know, moments before we hopped on, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a letter to Congress. Yes, I saw that. You saw that. Okay.

In which he basically says, like, hey, Congress, it'd be totally cool to work with you on this. Yeah. You know, state and pertinent entities, DOJ, will be working with you. But, like, the fact that basically Rubio is saying we're going to work with you lawmakers on this, which is what is in the federal statute,

feels like a walk back for sure and arguably a loss for musk in this right case to take over usa i i am waiting for some additional additional reporting on what transpired but uh and maybe you'll have it uh by tomorrow but let's set the table a little bit before we get into it so we know it is still in existence basically and tell me if i'm wrong or tell me where I'm wrong in my chronology here. A couple days ago, last week or so, it became apparent that USAID, which is the federal agency tasked with humanitarian assistance and the promotion of US foreign policy abroad, was in the crosshairs of Doge. Elon Musk was tweeting out a series of attacks on the agency,

and then it became apparent that members of Doge were actually accessing information within the agency. Over the weekend, Elon Musk continued by calling the agency corrupt, suggesting that it was a deep state plot for Democrats to go after their enemies, suggesting that they've been involved in spreading COVID or at least funding the research that caused COVID, attacking people who defended it. And all the while, it was unclear if USAID personnel were even allowed to operate. And then this morning, we wake up and the website's down for USAID. And people who work in the DC office can no longer access or were told not to even come into the office. The people I've been talking to in the know say this is insane, like totally insane. People are freaking out. They don't know if they have

actually a future at the agency. And even with Marco Rubio's clarification, it's unclear. So that's where we're at. Did I miss anything? No, that's about it. That's about it. The only thing, you don't need me anymore. The only thing I'd say is that yes, people I've been talking to as of this morning had email access. Now they don't. It's still unclear how deep in the USAID systems Doge is or whether what the actual structure of the organization is. Rubio says he's the acting administrator. It's unclear.

Trump actually has the authority to give him that title. So there's a lot of stuff that's still out there. But let's start basic stuff. Alex, what does USAID do? What does it do? So USAID is the foreign assistance arm of the US government. So important to know 1961, John F. Kennedy creates this, it's part of the big act, there's an executive order. And the main thing was that this will make it a lot easier for the US to dole out foreign aid to the rest of the world. And why and why and why shepherd into one agency as opposed to it being diffuse, which it was beforehand? So part of it is to connect it more to the State Department.

The State Department is the one in charge of America's foreign policy, so therefore there's some connection there. The other part of it really is that if we get boiled down to it, USAID is a contracting agency. Their job is to provide contracts to aid organizations, faith-based organizations, other organizations to then go do their work. If they go do good work, they might get U.S. government money. And why don't we just do it ourselves? What do you mean ourselves? Yeah, one of the critiques is why are we contracting that to NGOs? Like if it's important enough, the U.S. government should do it ourselves.

Well, part of it is there's the infrastructure. In theory, it could be cheaper, right, because you can just give out temporary contracts as opposed to having to forever staff. And then the other part is that some people, they have expertise that the U.S. government doesn't. So in a sense, it's more efficient to give it to these organizations that are already working in the areas anyway, have the existing relationships. Like you're saving money in terms of time and efficiency by giving it to these organizations that are already working in the areas anyway, have the existing relationships. Like you're saving money in terms of time and efficiency by giving it to these kinds

of organizations. And they have the contracting expertise anyway. Contracting is actually a really hard art in and of itself. Okay. And what are the main buckets of things that they do? All kinds of things. They're tracking pandemics. They are providing medical services, vaccinations, maternity care. They are providing economic assistance to countries or cities in need. They are supporting, let's say, democracy, freedom fighters, if you want to give them that, around the world. Not necessarily like combating, but like pro-democracy activists in China. You can say freedom fighters. This is the bulwark. Okay, you too. No, but like literally there are programs where the US supports pro-democracy movements in China.

Or even in like say the war in Ukraine, providing firewood to the troops there so they can stay warm when they're on the front lines. So like it's a whole bunch of things. What's the main – prior to this past week, what has been the main critique of USAID? That it is inefficient. It doesn't use America's money in the best possible way. And in fact, that it should be more aligned with whatever administration's foreign policy is. There's actually fairly good arguments for it to be folded into the State Department, which is what, and in fact, two countries off the top of my head have done something similar, Australia and the UK. So it's not like it's a

wholly out of left field idea. In fact, Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State, kind of brought USAID further into the state fold. The question here is, why does this administration want to do it? And why are they doing it in this weird seemingly illegal fashion so what why why do they want what is the deal here like why why is this on elon musk's radar so much he's obviously been tasked with cutting the government down in size but usa if i'm wrong correct me has what 0.7 percent of the budget is devoted to usa right like it's not the biggest yeah it's not the biggest line of the budget uh and it's not nothing but it's not the biggest, yeah, it's not the biggest line of the budget. It's not nothing, but it's not the biggest line of the budget.

So why is it so centralized for Elon's focus here? A couple of things. First of all, I'm glad you got your glasses clean for this point. It's very important. I couldn't see you as clearly as I wanted to. And I only want clear sand in my business. Yes. 2020 sand.

Okay. All right, get on with it. Come on. No fun. All right. There's many reasons and actually probably too long to get into, but I will very much shorten it to there are allies on X that are saying, look at all this stuff that USAID is wasting. Isn't that a bad idea um someone got it in trump's head that we spent 50 million dollars on condoms in gaza even though it turns out to be some account

some account like libtard suck 38 24 says look at this line item and elon's like ah well also there's a gentleman whose name escapes me but he is using the same talking points that like rt is using oh she's russian today and that sort of, and Trump has quote tweeted that guy. And now you've got Medvedev, Dmitry Medvedev, who used to be the former president of Russia, saying it's great that USAID is dying, et cetera. So there's all that. And then also I think, and this is a,

and I don't have a report, it's just, the guess is that if you're Elon Musk and you're trying to cut even bigger line items from the US budget, you might as well start small and see how the playbook goes. Right. My theory is this is the lowest hanging political fruit, right? Not many people really care, let's be honest, about foreign aid. In fact, probably think it's 25% of the budget or something when it's really not.

It's 1%. Yeah. They wonder, well, why are we wasting, why spend $30 billion on all this stuff around the world when that can be spent on people domestically? It's 1%. left-leaning people well like no but it's a mostly left-leaning organization right who who is attracted to doing human aid and development type work it tends to be left-leaning folks which doesn't make it any less of a important project i mean it's apolitical folks working on behalf of any administration and there's like an actual need they would argue they would say that if you show america's goodwill and you provide and you make places more stable rather than unstable, then actually you can spend less on like the Defense Department or the military. Right, sure. But these are like these kinds of arguments, yeah. So what authority, and then the obvious question is what authority does Elon Musk even have here to go in and say, you know what, I want to see the books?

So two things. On one end, Trump did give him the Eo the executive order create doge you can go ahead and do this so there is that presidential stamp of approval sure but on the usa side it's clearly illegal i mean there it is usa's existence as an independent organization what's illegal be specific be specific about what's like yes sorry fair enough usa's existence as an independent organization is and is is codified in federal statute. And the if you wanted to reorganize it in any way, in any major way, including folding it into state or dissolving certain offices or whatnot, that requires acts of Congress. And we know and we know this because after the executive order of 1961, it was codified in a law in 1998 and then reaffirmed even last year in 2024. So for Musk to do whatever, and like there's again, there are real

genuine reasons to do reform and move offices or whatnot, but all of that needs to be decided through Congress. So that raises the question, why is it, why was it shut down today? I mean, in theory, I guess it's still operating, but it's not. They can't get in. Emails are not working. Websites down. Why? How is it shut down? So this is kind of the main question. Why can't contractors get into their portals? Why can't people get into emails? It feels like Musk is on the page of I am shutting it down completely. In fact, on X, he keeps saying that the organization was, right, not is. Whereas you have Musk in an official letter to Congress saying, hey, this didn't exist. We're just going to work.

Rubio. Rubio in an official letter. Yeah. Yes. I got you. So one person treating it as the past, the other person as it exists in the present. Yeah. But again, I guess the other way to look at it is in the present yeah but again i guess the other way to

look at it is okay so it's been in theory shut down or paused temporarily depending on how you view it what what do we know is being done to effectuate its reopening by its defenders so really the only thing democrats have at this point is to have senators put holds on trump nominees which we have two senators saying they're going to do that that's brian shots of hawaii who was the first to come out of the gate and hours later chris van holland of maryland said he'd do the same i did appreciate yeah i was gonna say i appreciated van holland jumping in but you know once you got one i you don't need the other yeah that's right exactly go like okay go sign go find something else to do you know like there's other nominees to worry about but go ahead yeah

but okay but like that's one thing they could do and then you've got house members saying you know we can try to block a lot of big bills that republicans are really want or trump really wants including this big uh tax and and you know agenda bill that they're working on but like other than that really there's not much they could do. They're in the minority. What about lawsuits though? What about lawsuits, right? Like people who work for USAID, they feel like they have a case to make that they've been harmed by this pause. And if you say correctly, that the law is very clear that they can't just unilaterally shut down this agency, where are the lawsuits or are there lawsuits? So those are supposed to be coming. In fact, Van Hollen told me today, he was working with the group democracy forward to eventually put something out perhaps in

the uh federal you know dc federal court but my the question though i i mean i'm not a legal mind but the question is who is the defendant is it musk is it the trump administration like maybe i mean i'm again not a legal mind but right who'd who and then like who do you say stop doing what stop blocking the emails stop blocking the doors it's like what so you who you're telling who to do what i i don't know the answer to fair enough i will say that you can file more than one lawsuit sure yeah i'm not a legal mind man i'm not a legal mind but like no it's crazy that we're in a weird position where we don't know who is responsible for anything. No, even this administration

can't agree whether this agency is open or not. Or whether it exists. Even though I stood outside it today. I know, I saw that. And they didn't, if correct me if I'm wrong, they went into the agency to get in and then a security guy's just like, no, you can't come in.

And these are like senators and congressmen being like okay i guess like it was an it was an embarrassing scene i will just like okay so they gave an hour's worth of speeches outside and then it ends with chris van holland going like we're going in and we're gonna see what's going on and then they go in and first of all security guards like please single file line please go whatever and then uh there were there were guys outside being like hey we can't let you in they go go, can we speak to a supervisor? They go back in.

They lock all the doors. Twelve minutes later. So they're just sitting there. We're all like trying to talk to them, but they don't want to talk. I'm charging my phone. I call my editor. I have enough time to call my editor. Then the guy comes out and goes, hey, from the office of the administrator, we can't let you in.

Now, we don't know who the administrator is. Who the administrator is. We don't know who the administrator is. It could be one of these 21-year-old Musk protégés who sent the email this morning. By the way, I just want to be clear. The email that came to USA This Morning was from, I believe, someone who was in college as of 2020. Maybe, I think he's 24 years old. He's one of these six Musk protégés who's been entrusted to basically figure out every payment that the government is making and which ones they want to cancel.

And it's like no one knows who this kid is. Nothing against 24-year-olds, but it's just a little bit wild that they're just shutting down agencies and that's the point of contact. I mean we haven't even gotten to the point where they like effectively burst into USAID over this past weekend. Oh, tell us. Let's go. Let's tell us about that quickly. I think that's how we got. I think this is how we get to this email. So this past Friday before the weekend, it turned our set. But it was sorry. It was Saturday. They go in. They go, hey, can we get in? Can we get in? We want to like see classified areas. And the security guards like, no. Some of you don't even have the right

security clearances. Then they get then the Doge folks threatened them with marshals. The USA security guards got put on administrative leave. And then they got access to classified systems and classified areas of USA office of the administrator, etc. And so anyway, this guy presumably

got access because he's now, he was not a USA employee, but he sends it from a USAID account. Now, if you go press at USAID.gov, which is where the media goes to ask questions, it just goes to that guy. Imagine being like 24 and just be like, all right, I'm running USAID. But also it's so freaking crazy. And clearly, like, I mean, I guess my question on that is, is there going to be retroactive accountability for what happened this weekend? Because to me, it seems pretty, I mean, I know the White House has been saying no one got access to any classified information unless they got proper security clearances but like will we ever know who actually got access to what and will we have accountability maybe in two years when democrats if democrats take over the house but boy that for people who cared about you know hillary clinton's emails right like and stuff like that that seems highly reckless sure i mean like uh you can imagine it's two years i mean you know we can send foias and

they'll come back six years from now. Yeah, I'm sure the Trump administration is going to be right on our FOIA. Yeah, I mean, you know, we'll file them. But this is the thing, is that right now what you have is the president's best friend, right, world's richest man, has decided he doesn't

like this certain government agency and that he's effectively going to dismantle it in a way that is against the law but you read so but you read the rubio thing and and then we can close up here but you read the rubio thing as a defeat for musk i might be too strong i know that's what was my initial thought but i think now rereading it it's definitely a step back right uh it acknowledges it acknowledges the existence of usa yeah it exists and we're and we will work with congress the part that is not a win i'd read is like there's a section there that goes the state department and pertinent entities so that's those presumably in which case they will still be part of the process but now it

seems like we're gonna have this moment where musk says like trump told me to shut it down and agrees that we should shut it down and then trump going elon doesn't do anything without talking to me now you have rubio basically saying this thing still exists and we will work with you congress now that rubio also is yeah and he's claimed active administration over it so it, at some point, I guess he is in charge and Congress could back channel to him or talk to him. I know we were just, I was just watching a Senate press conference, Senate Democrat press conference where Brian Schatz was basically like, look, I'm talking to Rubio. I mean, he's been overseas. It's hard to get in touch with him, but I am talking to him about this. And so there is some optimism, if you want to call it that, that it could,

that USAID could survive, but it will be highly reformed and likely in the State Department, right? It could be. I mean, look, the lawmakers I've talked to include, especially the senators, and I talked to Schatz today, they've all expressed the same disappointment. They're like, look, he was in the Senate. Why is he basically removing us from this process? He was a senator not that long ago. Yeah. I mean, I think no matter what happens, even if there is a genuine normal process through Congress, USAID is not going to look like it did before the start of this. And maybe there's actually good reforms that will happen. That could totally be the case. But this was like the dumbest dystopia and the dumbest constitutional crisis to cause over USA, right?

And all over the fact that Elon just doesn't seem to like the organization, which again, do the reforms. Go ahead and do them. Work with Congress. There are lawmakers, including Democrats, that would love, love to reform USA. They would love to do it, but not this.

And I think that's what's frustrating for a lot of people is like online, the discourse is, well, look at what Elon has uncovered and isn't this horrible and why are we funding this stuff? And it's like, well, sure. I mean, I don't necessarily think he's putting the like objective spin on it, but like, sure. Let's say that is true. You still can't just have one guy come in and be like, done. That's not how it works, nor is it how it should work. You have to have a process. There have to be laws. There have to be guardrails and accountability and at least a little bit of

transparency, right? Like just a modicum. That'd be nice. Anyways, we are where we are. Thank you for unpacking this, my man. I really appreciate it. We will have you back for sure because this is a lot of fun. Maybe you'll get a better studio next time. We'll see. No, I'll only do it from there for now. Alright, Alex Ward of the Wall Street Journal. Folks, as

always, do subscribe, click, like, whatever. Thank you for tuning in and we will talk soon. McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag.

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