The Plan to Destroy America's Soft Power
Trump and Musk are on a mission to wreck the positive side of America's global influence, while emboldening its autocratic enemies, argues Matt Bernardini
Many Europeans I know are watching in horror as the United States Government destroys itself from the inside. Co-Presidents Donald Trump and Elon Musk have quickly worked to hollow out key Government agencies and install only loyalists who will not push back against them. Unfortunately, the damage that is being done will not only affect Americans, but those who believe in democracy across the globe. This is because Musk and Trump have also made it a point to get rid of aid that lifts up those less fortunate in countries that are impoverished or corrupt.
Musk and his young and sometimes racist interns have done much of this damage through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for short. For all the talk that DOGE has generated, it’s still unclear what it is. Musk has called DOGE a new Government agency which will rein in waste, fraud, and abuse, yet DOGE is not legally a Government agency. However, in a sign of the pervasive lawlessness in our Government, this hasn’t stopped DOGE employees from getting access to key agencies like the Treasury Department and the Department of Education.
But so far the biggest impact DOGE has made is on the international aid agency USAID. For no apparent reason, Musk has called the agency “a criminal organization” and that it was “time for it to die”. The right wing has spread further conspiracies about the program being involved in money laundering and kickbacks to Government employees. However, underneath the lies and the conspiracy theories, the fact is that getting rid of USAID will hurt some of the most vulnerable populations on Earth while emboldening autocratic countries to fill that void.
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