President Donald Trump’s second administration has made the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) a prime target for spending cuts. Under Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, is taking a serious look at the foreign aid agency — and America’s allies and enemies alike are taking notice.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital at the United Nations, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó didn’t hide his disdain for USAID. While insisting that he was not interested in interfering with U.S. domestic issues, Szijjártó did speak about what he saw from the agency under former President Joe Biden.
“The former administration couldn’t digest that we weren’t ready to give up our national positions. We were not ready to give up representing our national interests,” Szijjártó told Fox News Digital. “And we were not ready to give up our non-liberal, patriotic, conservative type of approach.”
Former President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15, 2023. (Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Szijjártó also accused the Biden administration of using USAID to “destabilize the situation in other countries” and to fund “programs which were totally alien and strange compared to the culture and the heritage of other countries.”
“If you ask me whether it’s good to us that there’s a revision period of 90 days when it comes to payments regarding USAID and others, we are very happy,” he added.
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a longtime ally of Trump, also ripped USAID after it was reported that the agency was funding Politico.
Orbán followed up in another tweet saying, “We had to endure for years that the ultra-progressive, self-proclaimed human rights champions of the mainstream media demonized Patriotic political forces for years. They did it because they were paid to do so by USAID and the previous, left-wing US administration. I agree with President [Trump]: this is too big and too dirty to hide from.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed during Wednesday’s press briefing that “more than $8 million taxpayer dollars” went to Politico, adding that DOGE is “working on canceling those payments.” However, the publication denied that it has ever been a “beneficiary of government programs.”
Musk, who is heading up Trump’s cost-cutting efforts through DOGE, described the agency as a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”
Elon Musk leads the Department of Government Efficiency. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
MEET THE BIDEN-ERA USAID LEADER FACING BACKLASH AMID MUSK’S DOGE CRACKDOWN
On Monday, Trump’s White House issued a list of examples of “waste and abuse” at USAID. This included $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt, $1.5 million in funding for DEI programs in Serbia’s workplaces, $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia and more.
The White House also accused the agency of spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” on “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” adding that this was “benefiting the Taliban.”
President-elect Donald Trump, left, and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, on Nov. 19, 2024. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
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At the end of its list, the White House noted that the highlighted examples were part of a longer list of projects.
“Under President Trump, the waste, fraud, and abuse ENDS NOW,” the White House added.
