"Foundation For Freedom Online" founder Mike Benz spoke about USAID, the U.S. Agency For International Development, which Donald Trump has essentially shut down.
MIKE BENZ: This by now should be a familiar picture to people who've been subbed for a while where I've described the inside of the blob. Now what's going on in this picture, for people who are new here or just to freshen up for folks who need a reminder.
This describes our trifecta of foreign policy establishments and again, foreign policy just means the American empire instead of the American homeland.
We are an empire that stretches the globe. We must manage our empire affairs, our vassal states, our markets. And so we have three big agencies in the government that do that, and none of these agencies are allowed to operate at home.
Those are the State Department for US national interests, the Defense Department/Pentagon, for national security, and our intelligence community, which provides covert or plausibly deniable assistance on national interest grounds or national security grounds.
National security grounds, meaning a military threat. National interest, if you remember it's, "We want it we got it." National interest means anything. Does it make us richer? Do we want it?
The part that I've left out of this to avoid confusion is a big old entity right in the middle of them. That entity is USAID.
Now, USAID was created in the early 1960s by President John F. Kennedy because the American Empire had been tripping over itself for some time. Because when we set up the CIA in 1947, and we reframed the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1947, and we began this creation, really expansion dramatic expansion of the American Empire abroad, outside, we had the DOD doing international development work, so to speak, for military reasons. We had the State Department doing international development work if you will, humanitarian work, supporting local institutions for national interest reasons, and we the CIA doing its own thing.
So they were all tripping over each other. The Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA were all tripping over each other. There was no centralized agency to coordinate all the different reasons that we run money into foreign countries to influence the course of events in those countries.
Again, they all face outward -- they're supposed to.
What is USAID? When people hear the name USAID, they focus on "aid," they focus on thinking like it's humanitarian work. But "aid" is not actually in the name of US aid.
USAID stands for the "United States Agency for International Development," not aid, it's not a charity.
And international development is simply capacity building.
Mike Benz educates Joe Rogan on USAID: “There is no aid in USAID. It's not an aid organization. USAID stands for US Agency for International Development. What it's developing is all the activist organizations in foreign countries that the state department is building to gain… pic.twitter.com/AgTOuZwPy4
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) February 2, 2025
MIKE BENZ: There is no aid in USAID. Your brain is being tricked when you see the phrase "USAID." It's not an aid organization. USAID stands for US Agency for International Development. What it's developing internationally is all of the institutions that the State Department needs to use.
When they are capacity-building activist groups in a foreign country, it is because the State Department wants those activists there. USAID for the first time in its history -- it was created by JFK in the 1960s -- was created because all the intelligence, statecraft, support, and logistical aid was tripping over itself. The military would run aid to certain groups, the State Department would run aid to groups in the region, and the intelligence community would too. There was no central coordinator of those operations.
USAID is a $50 billion operation, the entirety of the intelligence community is only $72 billion. It has more than the CIA and the State Department. USAID is effectively a switch player to assist the Pentagon on national security, the State Department on national interest, and the intelligence community on clandestine operations.
Why did USAID sponsor the 70-NGO consortium that directly threatened newly elected 2019 President Zelensky in Ukraine with 25 "Red Lines Not To Be Crossed" by his new government, ensuring USAID grantees controlled virtually every facet of how Ukraine could run its own country? pic.twitter.com/QKLkLZqAqH
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 3, 2025
To understand how USAid has protected itself for so long, read this brilliantly lucid account of what happened to Trump 1.0-appointed @MarkMoyar in 2019 when he uncovered corruption, fraud and waste at the agency.
His book is a blueprint for how to dismantle the Deep State and… https://t.co/C83MYwajE0
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 3, 2025
Liberia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda received more than a fifth of their total development assistance from USAID, said researchers at the Center for Global Development. The small size of their economies means that aid accounts for an average of 11% of their gross national income: “With USAID providing 30% of [development assistance], the freeze could create a shortfall equivalent to over 3% of GNI,” the researchers said, triggering “a potentially major economic shock.”