Even Trump’s chief of staff was ‘aghast’ at Elon Musk’s deadly USAID cuts

Wiles says she called Musk out on the carpet. “You can’t just kick people out of their office,” she remembers telling him. At first, Wiles did not understand the effect that cutting USAID programs would have on humanitarian aid. “I didn’t know much about the scale of their subsidies.” But if vaccinations were disrupted in Africa, lives would be lost. Soon she was fielding frantic calls from relief agency heads and former government officials with a dire message: Thousands of lives were at stake.

Wiles continued: “So Marco is on his way to Panama. We call him and say, ‘You’re confirmed by the Senate. You are going to have to be the guardian, essentially, of [USAID].’ “Okay,” he said. But Musk forged ahead – all accelerating, not braking. “Elon’s attitude is you have to do it quickly. If you’re an incrementalist, you’re just not going to get your rocket to the moon,” Wiles said. “And so with that attitude, you’re going to break china. But no rational person would think that USAID’s process was good. Person.”