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Former President George W. Bush joined up with former President Barack Obama and U2 singer Bono to comfort United States Agency for International Development employees Monday, while also taking shots at President Donald Trump and his administration for shuttering the agency plagued by accusations of fraud and abuse.
“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy,” Obama said in a video that was shown to departing USAID employees Monday, according to the Associated Press. “Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world.”
Obama summed up the decision to shutter the agency as “a colossal mistake,” and added that “sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed.”
Bush, Obama and Bono spoke to departing USAID employees Monday in a videoconference as the agency officially was shuttered following the Trump administration’s reporting that it was overrun with alleged corruption and mismanagement. The videoconference did not include members of the media, with the Associated Press reviewing and reporting on clips of the conference later that day.
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USAID is an independent U.S. agency that was established under the Kennedy administration to administer economic aid to foreign nations. It was one of the first agencies investigated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in early February for alleged mismanagement and government overspending, with DOGE’s then-leader Elon Musk slamming the agency as “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”
USAID officially was absorbed by the State Department Tuesday.
Bush, who overwhelmingly has shied away from publicly criticizing Trump, lamented in his recorded message to the staffers that the end of USAID marks an end to his administration’s work rolling out an AIDS and HIV program that is credited with saving 25 million people nationwide.
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“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 of U2 fame recited a poem he wrote reflecting on USAID’s closure and his claims that millions around the world will likely now die, according to the Associated Press.
“They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,” Bono said.
Fox News Digital reached out to Obama’s and Bush’s respective offices Wednesday morning for additional comment, but did not receive responses.
Other longtime Trump foes, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, thanked foreign service officers for their work before USAID’s closure.
“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.”
Obama and Bush overwhelmingly have remained tight-lipped on their views of Trump under his second administration, with both former presidents attending Trump’s inauguration and not weighing in on the majority of Trump’s policies. Obama has taken issue with Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which is clearing its final hurdles to passage and will fund Trump’s agenda on social media, while Bush has consistently shied away from public rebukes of Trump in recent history.
Bono previously has claimed that cuts to USAID would kill hundreds of thousands of people, and had slammed Trump in 2016 as “potentially the worst idea that ever happened to America.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was serving as acting administrator of USAID, announced the State Department absorbed USAID’s foreign assistance programs Tuesday after decades of failing to ensure the programs it funded actually supported America’s interests.
“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 announcement. “Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown.”
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“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.”
The shuttering comes after DOGE gutted USAID as part of Trump’s effort to remove waste, fraud and abuse from the federal government earlier in 2025.
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Trump repeatedly had touted DOGE’s work uncovering fraud and mismanagement within the federal government, including in his March address before Congress celebrating that DOGE identified $22 billion in government “waste,” including at USAID.
“Forty-five million dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma,” Trump said as he rattled off various examples of federal waste. “Forty million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. Eight million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of. Sixty million dollars for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty million. Eight million for making mice transgender.”
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