Who Let the DOGE Out?

(Plus, how dare Elon Musk point out that we fund terrorists!)

I did something stupid this weekend.

Really stupid.

The worst part is, it wasn’t even a new stupid thing. (And it wasn’t just sitting through nearly four hours of sportsball waiting for some commercials that never aired, either.)

See, my youngest daughter is home on a hiatus between modeling gigs and has spent the time designing and crafting the most gorgeous cowhide purses, wallets, and “pocket shrines” (as you do) that you likely have ever seen. She decided to open a Depop shop and of course, I wanted to help her spread the word.

I mentioned it was stupid, right?

Anyway, I was just going to go to my own dusty profile, drop a quick humble-brag, post a link to Sasha’s store, and bolt. (*I was also going to get in the best shape of my life last year and sand and repaint all of my deck railings this winter, so maybe you shouldn’t always trust my intentions.)

I came really close to executing my plan, I swear I did, but I accidentally took a wrong turn after post and before bolt and wound up in the murky hell that is my Facebook feed.

Obviously, I know that there are people out there who are furious over the Trump administration’s slashing of USAID funding and personnel. They think Elon Musk in particular is a danger to national security and cannot believe Trump is giving the “unelected billionaire” access to classified information. (For what it’s worth, there are millions of people—literally—who have the exact same access, even though AOC made it sound as if Trump were handing out Top Secret Security Clearance badges willy-nilly to random billionaires on the street.) Call me naïve, but I assumed the livid were the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates and the pander of paid shills at Politico or the succubus of media spin doctors at the New York Times and not my daughters’ childhood swim coach, a former boss (one of my very favorites), and the friends we once went skiing with.

I suppose if you’re getting your “news” from CNN *you guys know there are people still getting their “news” from CNN, right?* I can see why you might be feeling distraught.

All of that benevolent humanitarian aid (that was going to armed combatant groups, whoops), all of those lifesaving vaccines being distributed to impoverished nations around the world (that don’t have their own murderous CDC to hand them out like candy for free), all of those billions in support to help Ukraine (stockpile weapons, draw out the war, and pull the U.S. into direct conflict with Russia)—gone. Poof. Dried up like the chicken wings you forgot about in the air fryer for four hours.

If my Facebook feed is an accurate microcosm of the liberal world, people out there aren’t just angry—they’re terrified. They’re talking about prepping (the irony!) and home-schooling (“Without a Department of Education, I guess we’re just going to have to indoctrinate our own kids!”) and taking action to fight this outrageous coup.

This one went on for literal infinity, but you get the idea.

They personally know the good USAID people doing this fine work, and they are incredibly concerned about how much money curtailing government spending is going to cost us (I don’t get it either).

They’re in a full-blown panic over the raging tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas, which has affected 67 whole people, or 0.00002 of the state’s population. They’re naturally blaming Trump and Musk for this dire medical emergency, even though TB is only spread through prolonged close contact with someone who has active tuberculosis, is treatable, and has a mortality rate in the U.S. that is a fraction of that of the seasonal flu.

I am actually embarrassed for this person, whom I know in real life.

Most of all, they’re really, extra enraged at Elon for having the unbelievable nerve to question government spending, a point they are going to belabor, loudly and furiously, in the hopes that nobody will notice that they couldn’t give a flying middle finger about the shocking misappropriation his questioning has uncovered.

Seriously, how dare he.

Presumably people see that AID part of the agency’s acronym and assume it implies pure charity and bottomless benevolence, but the reality is that USAID stands for United States Agency for International Development, and its mission revolves around advancing U.S. national security and economic prosperity while demonstrating American values.

Filmmaker Mikki Willis posted “The Truth about USAID” on X:

“[USAID] is funded by taxpayers and headquartered in Washington, D.C. However, the only people USAID truly aids are corrupt politicians and their masters. One of its primary functions is to further empower the Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA.

For years, foreign governments have accused USAID of serving as a front for the CIA and other groups working to destabilize their nations. It operates as a money-laundering machine, siphoning billions of taxpayer dollars into globalist agendas.”

As an agency, USAID has 10,000 employees and gives away forty billion dollars a year. This is taxpayer money—our money—and certainly [she wrote hopefully] not every penny of it is going to an illegitimate, wasteful, or self-serving cause. But some of it most definitely is. (A spending analysis by the Middle East Forum uncovered $164 million in taxpayer-funded grants to Islamist organizations, including $122 million to terrorist groups.) Why on earth would anyone not want to know precisely how much?

Imagine your trusty Toyota breaks down on the side of the road and you call literally the planet’s most brilliant mechanic to fix it. Are you going to threaten to clean that mechanic’s clock if he has the audacity to look under the hood? Or better yet, suppose someone hacks into your bank account and steals half your money, so you hire a private investigator to find the thief. When Magnum discovers your money was used to build a puppy-drowning machine, who are you mad at: Magnum or the larcenous murderer of tiny, innocent whelps?

The Seinfeld of senators, Louisiana’s inimitable John Kennedy, gave a marvelous monologue on DOGE’s dismantling of this disastrous agency and the crushing wave of MDS (Musk Derangement Syndrome) it has spawned. It’s well worth the sixteen minutes it’ll take you to watch it, but in case you’re short on time, I’ll pull out some of the more egregious examples of how the Bank of Biden has been plundering public funds:

• $27 million to the George Soros-backed Tides Center, which funneled millions into the BLM movement

• $20 million to produce an Iraqi version of Sesame Street

• $10 million in meals to an Al Qaida terrorist group

• $8.3 million for equity and inclusion education in Nepal

• $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists to avoid “binary gendered language”

• $6 million to “strengthen the livelihoods of the people of North Sinai” in Egypt

• $4 million to EcoHealth Alliance, the NGO linked to bat virus research at the Wuhan lab

• $4.5 million to combat disinformation in Kazakhstan

• $3.9 million for LGBTQ causes in Macedonia

• $2.4 million on cloud seeding (which apparently is not a conspiracy after all)

• $2 million to strengthen trans-led organizations in Guatemala

• $1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media

• and so much more it’ll make your head spin including, according to Jesse Watters, $43 million on an Afghanistan gas station that had no customers, $17 million for Vietnam “inclusion,” and $25 million to promote green transportation in Georgia (the country, not the home of the Atlanta Braves)

I could see—if the U.S. was ultra cash-flush at the moment (instead of being thirty-six trillion *NOT A TYPO* dollars in debt), and our own people were healthy and thriving (instead of ranking dead last in four of five health categories among industrialized nations), and we had things like homelessness and violent crime under control (instead of having some of the highest rates of both in the developed world)—wanting to sprinkle some of that good fortune around the globe.

But the reality is that America is fat, sick, broke, addicted, anxious, lonely, overmedicated, propagandized, and—who can blame it?—morbidly depressed. That forty billion could have put nearly $52,000 into the pocket of every homeless person in the United States every single year. It could have fed that same population three squares a day for nearly a decade and a half. It could have been used to expand reliable high-speed internet to underserved areas in every state or build community gardens across the country. It could have financed a renewable energy grid and free college tuition and childcare programs. Instead, the money that you and I toiled to earn generously bankrolled the advancement of DEI in Serbia, the promotion of LGBTQ advocacy in Jamaica, and more GOF research in Wuhan.

Let me get this straight, Facebook friends.

You’re not pissed at our government for their out-of-control, out-of-the-country fiscal tomfoolery…

… you’re pissed at Musk for making it public knowledge?

Mkay.

“President Trump ran for president on a number of issues,” Kennedy quipped in his Senate floor speech. “One of the issues he ran on—he said it almost every day, he said, ‘if you will make me president, I’m gonna go through the entire budget and review all the spending line by line.’ And that’s what he’s been doing. He went out and appointed through an executive order, Elon Musk, and he said, Mr. Musk, I want you to do for me what I said I was gonna do in the election. I want you to go through all the spending line by line. Now let me ask you something, mister president. How are you gonna review the spending without reviewing the spending? How are you gonna audit the spending by an agency without auditing the agency?”

I guess we just have to accept the fact that we share a planet with people who would rather defend our government’s addiction to “spending porn” than admit Elon Musk might be in the right. All I can say is, it’s a good thing I have someone in my house making pocket shrines.

I think I know what you think about DOGE’s work on USAID… but share your thoughts on the folks who are freaking out about it in the comments. ;)

Or order a signed book!