'Just a ball of worms': Musk says Trump ready to shut down 'criminal organization' USAID

President Donald Trump, convinced that the U.S. "foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values," is taking an axe to the status quo — and it appears that the U.S. Agency for International Development might be next on the chopping block.

Elon Musk told Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Vivek Ramaswamy in an X Spaces conversation early Monday that the president has agreed that USAID, the pre-eminent international humanitarian and development arm of the federal government, cannot be fixed with "minor housecleaning" and must be "shut down."

"As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have, actually, just a ball of worms," said Musk. "It's hopeless. USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, you just gotta basically get rid of the whole thing."

Musk noted further that Trump "agreed we should shut it down."

The stated mission of USAID, which was established in 1961 to implement the Foreign Assistance Act, is to "partner to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing [American] security and prosperity."

According to the Congressional Research Service, in fiscal year 2023 — the most recent year for which complete data is available — the agency managed over $40 billion in combined appropriations and employed over 10,000 individuals, two-thirds of whom worked overseas, not including institutional support contractors.

'USAID [is] run by radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.'

In 2023, USAID was dishing out American assistance in roughly 130 countries, the biggest beneficiaries of which were, in descending order, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Jordan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Yemen, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Syria — now run by a terrorist who used to lead the Al-Nusrah Front and benefited from the CIA's operation Timber Sycamore.

USAID has blown American money abroad in a number of controversial and damaging ways.

For instance, the agency reportedly poured $38 million into an EcoHealth Alliance project titled "Predict-2" between October 2014 and September 2019. The subcontractor listed on the grant was Ben Hu, the Wuhan Institute of Virology's lead on gain-of-function research on SARS-like coronaviruses and among the "patients zero" — one of the three lab researchers first infected with COVID-19 in November 2019.

A USAID spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that the funding for research at the likely origin of the deadly COVID-19 virus "was part of the agency’s mission to identify and contain pandemic threats. The project provided about $815,000 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and $39,000 to Wuhan University."

Blaze News previously reported that USAID also bankrolled the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a giant international journalism organization that had a hand in the first impeachment of Trump and in the targeting of perceived adversaries of the American political establishment. The OCCRP lists among its supporters USAID, along with George Soros' Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, noted over the weekend that while "marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of [USAID] funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements."

"At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda," added Bukele.

Samantha Power, a former Obama adviser who served as USAID administrator from 2021 until 2025, once bragged that USAID was America's "soft power arsenal" and one of its "better-kept secrets."

Under Power, USAID meddled in the political affairs of various nations, including Ethiopia, Bolivia, and Ukraine. USAID has also awarded grants to various groups that work to influence domestic politics, such as the Tides Center, which is a sister organization to the leftist grant-making Tides Foundation.

Prior to the X Spaces discussion, Trump told reporters that USAID has "been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out. USAID [is] run by radical lunatics, and we're getting them out, and then we'll make a decision."

On his first day in office, Trump ordered a 90-day pause in foreign aid, affording his administration an opportunity to review relevant programs "for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy."

After the order went into effect last week, the administration fired or placed on furlough thousands of USAID employees and contractors. At least 56 senior career staffers who allegedly tried to get around Trump's foreign aid freeze, approving new contracts, were similarly placed on administrative leave.

NBC News reported that on Saturday evening, USAID director of security John Voorhees and his deputy, Brian McGill, tried to prevent members of the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing agency systems. DOGE personnel, allegedly keen to access USAID security systems and personnel files, were reportedly able ultimately to access the headquarters, and the two security officials were placed on leave.

Katie Miller, a member of the DOGE, noted Sunday, "No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances."

Musk stated early Monday that USAID, the website for which has gone dark, "is a criminal organization."

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