Posted on 07/05/2025 8:24:46 AM PDT by Signalman
Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are once again joining forces to denounce President Donald Trump, this time for slashing international services they claim are critical to U.S. interests.
Bush appears in a new video alongside Obama and U2 frontman Bono, a notorious Trump critic, praising the departing staffers of USAID, the international diplomacy arm that Trump gutted earlier this year. Bush was an advocate for funding the program to combat AIDS and HIV in parts of Africa.
“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy,” Obama said in a video shown to departing USAID employees on Monday. “Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world.”
Calling the decision by Trump “a colossal mistake,” he added that “sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed.”
Their warm words come as little comfort to employees of the United States Agency for International Development who now find themselves without government jobs for the first time in years. Trump, in partnership with Elon Musk and his U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, effectively dismantled the sprawling global agency but for a small skeleton staff while operations wound down.
The video message was not broadcast to the public, according to the AP, which obtained snippets of the trio’s comments.
Musk once referred to USAID as “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.” It was an early target of the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize a federal government the president said was ripe with waste, fraud, and abuse of tax dollars.
USAID was officially absorbed by the State Department on Tuesday, per the NY Post.
Bush, who has largely refrained from criticizing Trump since he first took office in 2016, spent his video remarks lamenting the loss of staffers he credited with contributing to global stability by reducing the spread of AIDS and HIV through a program that is credited with saving 25 million lives over the last 20 years.
“You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work — and that is your good heart,’’ Bush told USAID staffers, according to the Associated Press. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”
Bono regaled the sullen group with a poem written about his worry that millions will die as a result of USAID’s shuttering.
“They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,” Bono said.
Other Trump foes marked the official end of USAID with public messages, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“In all my years of service, I found that foreign service officers and development professionals were among the most dedicated public servants I encountered,” Clinton posted to X Tuesday. “Their work saves lives and makes the world safer. Today, and every day, I stand with them.”
Bush and Obama haven’t said much publicly about President Trump, and both appeared chummy with 47 at his inauguration in January. Bono, meanwhile, has ripped the Republican going back to his first election in 2016, calling Trump “potentially the worst idea that ever happened to America.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio contrasted the trio’s message of doom and gloom with optimism for an efficient government free of far-left political ideology.
“Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Rubio wrote in his statement. “Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown.”
“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end,” he continued. “Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance.
“Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency.”
Trump spent the first months of his administration working hand in glove with Musk and praising the work of DOGE to uncover more than $22 billion in “waste,” including at USAID.
“Forty-five million dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma,” Trump said while citing various examples of purported waste. “Forty million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is.”
I assume the claim that 25 million lives were saved by the AIDS program administered by USAID came from USAID. It’s probably inflated. Whatever the real number was, we didn’t need USAID to do it. Bush must know that, unless he’s a total moron.
Yes, they would promise to deal with the border situation and the illegal aliens but do nothing. They like the democRATS would say one thing but do another.
Trump comes along and does what he says, deals with the border situation and the illegal immigration (who democRATS count on as their constituents). Trump also deals with the Deep State, the shadow government that really pulls the strings.
Yes, the Bushes were nice people but did not keep their promises. Trump has changed the tone of what Americans expect these days. And since he clearly takes action, they are getting tired of the RINOs and the chummyness with the Clintoons, and to Obomooons; the good olde boy network that has gone the days of pie in the sky and trusting Government Agencies NGOs.
This generation has found out about all that stuff and are not amused.
From what I read, they were pushing trans comic books in Peru, gay musicals in Ireland and atheism in Nepal. Good riddance to that "important work"!
I have come to despise George W. Bush
Manchester Candidate Barack Hussein Obama is still in 1st place 🎖️🏆🏆🏆
Shut up you two Anti American Globalists!! The USAID gave money to PBS, CNN and the BBC. The money went to trash like gay porn in Columbia. That's critical to our interests? Maybe to SOCIALISTS like you two (and Bono), but not to Americans!
Bush 43 and Obama = 00.0000000000001% of the popularity of President Trump, JD Vance and their wives!! Who are beautiful ladies!!
Bush is the one who let spending spiral out of control. We were asleep at the wheel. They justify it with a war or a disease, and then they don’t return to prewar or predisease levels.
Why, George? Was USAID paying Jenna’s seven figure salary on NBC? That’s the only reason they’d keep that no-talant nepobaby on the air.
W needs to just STFU and go away.
“”We were asleep at the wheel””
You mean some of you were asleep at the wheel.
Um… Homeland Security. The Patriot Act. He was worse than Obama
Agree. Some rang the alarm, but the media chooses who gets heard, all the way up to this past election when it has started to turn.
But, they’ll probably just buy thise up, too, eventually.
Bush, Obammy and the Clintoons are the reasons the Epstein list disappeared.
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