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.”
My biggest political regret was ever backing W.
Bush is a cuck, Barry O is a mud shark and Bono can’t sing, so why should I GAF what the 3 stooges think or say.
True...but we were blind to the truth at the time, having come off 8 years of Clinton.
You are right, however.
“”“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy,”””
The only travesty and tragedy here... is that:
A. many people got fooled by GWB into thinking that he was actually on “our side”... ie American patriots that are for America ‘as founded’.... and that
B. many people got conned by Obama into believing that he was not going to be the worst, or one of the worst, things to happen to this nation (including the Civil War and two World Wars).
Two vultures of a feather, sticking together and sucking the life out of the USA with their globalist policies, and that... if there was any justice in this world, would also be “hanging together”... literally.
Two of the worst presidents in modern history
GWB sells us out, again…
“”””Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are once again joining forces to denounce President Donald Trump,”””
George W Bush’s legacy is that he promoted and created the Faith Based Initiative.
President Bush’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative
The Initiative in Action President Bush created the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives and Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in eleven Federal agencies to lead a determined attack on need by strengthening and expanding the role of FBCOs in providing social services.
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/government/fbci/president-initiative.html
That action by Bush is what allowed government agencies to give money to NGOs, which NGO,s then gave to orgs like Catholic Charities to aid and abet the illegal invasion.
So now Bush is foolishly directing attention to his actions by complaining about what Trump is doing.
Republicans like George W Bush are why I’d seriously consider backing Musk’s third party if he ever creates it.
Their favorite song is “Ebony and Ivory.”
George Jr. is still sore because it was little bro’ JEB!s turn to be president, and Trump took it away from him.
Democrats need no explanation.
These two failures are joined by Tax Cheat Bono shrieking about how US taxpayers should be glad to send their money to the corrupt NGOs to fund policies that will screw them and their children.
Also no child left behind ...
Why give money to foreign organizations who eventually hate us? Especially for gay/trans lunacy....
Keep strong,and kind to those truly in need. But don’t give your money to organizations and governments who see us as patsies. And whose operatives are skimming off the top.
It’s worth saying at least one more time. Same for me......
I didn't go that far. In fact I'm glad to have had a small part at the voting both of getting rid of these not so closeted democrats.
I'm just sorry it took me so long to see them for what they really are.
Human garbage. Half his "judges" were Lefty plants.
Buck Fush
I believe DOGE was actually cover for dismantling the deep-state/democrat-fed.gov-NGO grift operation.
USAID-NGO schemes funded intel-agency covert action, funded woke propaganda, funded democrat on-the-ground operations, and it funded outright payoffs to politicians at home and abroad.
These networks were attacked under the pretext of "government efficiency"
Some one had to Say It -—x3?
.
Bammy,Bush’n Bono....
Show Them the Door!
FWIW, I know a young lady who grew up on a farm in Malawi who lives in the US now. When she heard the controversy about USAID her reaction was not what I expected.
She was shocked that we did not know that USAID was corrupt. It was common knowledge in her life in Malawi has a young girl to steer clear of that organization.
She was very surprised that I did not know this.
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