Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Why Do We Need USAID? Stephen Colbert Talks To Fmr. Administrator

"Programs are shuttered. And immediately they were Shuttered from the minute the executive order went out." Samantha Power tells USAID Trump truth in video clip, short transcript here/ "The first three kids in a long long line in the sun got the TB medicine, everybody else was told to go home."

02.40

SP: JF Kennedy was thinking about the Battle for hearts and minds and what would win America the affections of a global public. So this is an investment in our stability, in our security, in our alliances.

And that is what US Aid has done since Kennedy created it, helped eradicate small pox, on the verge of eradicating polio again and again USAID is on the front lines of some of the hardest challenges that our country faces and that some of the most vulnerable people in the world face.

So it's a premier example it's a prime example of what people call soft power in the world influence in the rest of the world through the way we help them.

SC: Do you have any sense of what's actually going on at the agency right now because it's it's kind of confusing what the status is?

SP: It's confusing in some respects but the Core Fact is programs that people were depending on, in some cases for life saving medicine, like medicine if you have HIV that keeps you alive quite literally, or if you're in Sudan and you have a child who's wasting away because of malnutrition, a miracle paste a peanut paste that USAID provides brings that kid back from the brink of death.

All of those programs are shuttered. And immediately they were Shuttered from the minute the executive order went out.

And it didn't say hey let's review programs going forward, it said stop everything you are doing globally, right now, stop it, no matter the human consequences regardless if you were in the middle of Distributing food.

We have stories of kids who are going in for their TB medicine and the first three kids in a long long line waiting out in the hot sun got the TB medicine, everybody else was told to go home.