Marco Rubio is a character that Shakespeare would have loved. In fact, he’s one the Bard could have written. Character tells. Character ultimately defines our fate, whether it’s Hamlet being destroyed by indecision or Othello by jealousy. Rubio is a weak man, driven by a desire for power. He’s thrown his lot in with the worst presidential administration in American history. Now, at 4:33 a.m. Monday morning, March 10, we found out what Rubio and Musk must have been battling about after last week’s Cabinet meeting: USAID is now gone. And just like a character in Shakespeare, Rubio’s hands are covered in blood.
Claiming a “6 week review” had been conducted, Secretary Rubio announced, “we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.”
“The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” Rubio alleged, not defining what those core interests are. “In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department. Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.”
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted Secretary Rubio’s announcement “was news to state officials who were told LAST WEEK they’d have until this Wednesday to submit forms for the review process.”
Last week had already been a bad week for Secretary Rubio. A high-profile cabinet meeting fight with Elon Musk dominated headlines for days, leading to a Saturday Night Live skit mocking him and Elon Musk. Rubio is also being hammered with his own eloquent 2016 speech, for switching support from Ukraine to Russia. And he is being mocked for ignoring his own speech on why Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal.
The bad news did not stop there.
After his pre-dawn tweet, CNN’s KFile published a report on Rubio’s acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, “one of Trump’s most senior State Department appointees,” that exposed “deleted tweets spreading unfounded rumors that Rubio attended gay foam parties and calling him ‘low IQ.’”
Meanwhile, backlash is growing from Rubio’s announcement that USAID is being dismantled.
“Huge mistake,” declared Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, now a Stanford University professor. “We needed reform of USAID not dismantlement. China is not ending is foreign assistance programs. In an age of great power competition, the Trump administration is unilaterally destroying one of our best instruments of soft power influence.”
Dr. Norman Ornstein, a highly regarded political scientist, wrote: “I cannot believe that you were once viewed as a hero in the development and diplomacy community. Little Marco is not accurate enough for your cowardice and cruelty. Selling your soul and the lives of thousands or millions to bow down to Trump and have a Cabinet post. Disgraceful.”
Last month, Ambassador McFaul had written, “In 2012, when I was the US ambassador to Russia, Putin shut down USAID inside Russia. Why? Because their work supported free markets, democracy, human rights —ie causes that threatened Putins dictatorship. Shutting down USAID is exactly what autocrats all over the world want.”
An Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, Fred Wellman is a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School. He is now a political consultant and the host of the podcast “On Democracy.”
“You are disgusting. 6 weeks. Millions will suffer because you’re a coward. China will step in because you want Trump to give you power. What a small pathetic man,” Wellman charged.
This is a terrible thing, a decision that will be swept under the rug like so much of what this administration does. Hundreds of thousands of deaths that could have been prevented, won’t be, from malaria, tubercolosis, malnutrition, and many thousands will be crippled by polio. This is what the Secretary of State has decided to sign off on. The few remaining programs and jobs done by USAID, a shadow of a skeleton, will be overseen by the State Department. USAID, lifesaver that it was for 80 years, is no more.
Instead of acting on the repeated warnings, top administration officials, including the State Department’s director of foreign assistance, Peter Marocco, thwarted their own experts’ efforts to keep the U.S. Agency for International Development’s most vital programs up and running, according to internal memos and estimates compiled by global health leaders at the agency and obtained by ProPublica.
President Donald Trump’s political appointees, along with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, pressed ahead with their plan to dismantle USAID by ignoring and impeding staff who tried to protect lifesaving operations — even as the administration publicly insisted that those programs remained online — according to the memos and interviews with government officials.
During exchanges outlined in one of the memos, a DOGE engineer emailed staff and said they were not allowed to review the programs they were canceling. At another point, USAID’s then-deputy chief of staff, Joel Borkert, told agency personnel to take a “draconian” approach to approving waivers.
The explosive memos — which include summaries of email exchanges and top-level meetings inside USAID, as well as internal agency research — were sent by Nicholas Enrich, acting assistant administrator for global health. ProPublica also obtained detailed breakdowns of lifesaving programs managed by the bureau and the projected impact of cutting them. Enrich was placed on leave Sunday.
Enrich was placed on leave Sunday, at dawn on Monday Rubio announced the death of the agency. Six weeks into Trump’s second term and look at the toll it has already wrought. And what is the rationale behind this? America first? Does anybody think for a moment that children starving in this country will get the money that went to USAID? Or, that lifesaving vaccines are now assured for citizens of this country — especially with that lunatic Bobby Kennedy, Jr. in charge?
No, that won’t happen. It might be some justification for letting other people starve in other parts of the world, if people here benefited, but that won’t happen. A few billionaires got richer is all. And they got however much money that won’t make a difference in anything in their lives, their lifestyle, their happiness, none of it, at the expense of human suffering and death. So who benefits? Nobody. Except maybe the sick Ketamine-corrupted Musk, who perhaps takes some sadistic delight in afflicting the most vulnerable people on this globe.
This is not the Shining City On The Hill. That city went dark on November 5, 2024 and now what’s left of it is burning down. Bad things happen when good men do nothing. And terrible things happen when weak men let bad men do what they want.
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Mass MURDERERS are running the United States, with the support of millions of mass murderers who support them. One doesn’t have to be a Putin, invading a neighboring country killing tens of thousands and sanctioning countless War Crimes to qualify as a mass murderer with Trump back in the WH. Even a lowly MAGA too fucking stupid to realize how Trump his screwing him/her gets to be one and is tickled pink about it!
Hope he has his will in order.
Unfortunately citizens probably can’t sue Trump,Musk, and Rubio over the deaths caused by their murderous policies. Little Marco.lived up.to.his name. He grovelled. I hope the mess of pottage for which sold his soul was like chewing rocks and tasted of bullshit.
I am heartbroken and disgusted. Rubio, what did you DO???