Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama joined U2 frontman Bono on Monday to console USAID employees and take some final shots at President Donald Trump after the agency was shut down over fraud and mismanagement.
“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy,” Obama said in a video message to outgoing staff, The New York Post reported. “Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world.”
He called the move “a colossal mistake” and added, “Sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed.”
Bush, Obama, and Bono all appeared via videoconference to speak directly to USAID staff as the agency was officially shuttered following a federal probe into corruption and abuse. Media were not present, but clips from the event were reviewed by the Associated Press.
USAID, founded under the Kennedy administration, was created to provide foreign economic aid. But earlier this year, it became one of the first targets of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was established by President Trump to root out government waste. Then-DOGE head Elon Musk slammed the agency as “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”
USAID was officially absorbed by the State Department on Tuesday.
In a rare public rebuke, Bush, who has largely avoided criticizing Trump, said the closure ends a major piece of his presidency—the AIDS and HIV relief initiative that is credited with saving 25 million lives around the world.
“You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work—and that is your good heart,” Bush told the staff. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”
Bono read a poem he wrote to mark the end of the agency, claiming it would lead to widespread suffering.
“They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,” he said.
The Associated Press said Bono and Obama were emotional in their remarks, and Bush stayed focused on legacy. Fox News Digital reached out to both former presidents’ offices but did not receive a response.
Bono already claimed that cutting USAID would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. In 2016, he slammed Trump as “potentially the worst idea that ever happened to America.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who served as USAID’s acting administrator in its final weeks, announced the State Department would take over all foreign aid functions moving forward.
“Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Rubio said in his announcement.
“Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown.”
“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end,” he added. “Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests.”
He said that as of July 1, USAID “will officially cease to implement foreign assistance.”
“Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency.”
USAID’s closure comes after DOGE led the charge in early 2025 to root out federal waste. Trump has praised DOGE repeatedly, including during a March address to Congress where he celebrated $22 billion in identified waste, including massive spending at USAID.
“Forty-five million dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma,” Trump said, listing examples. “Forty million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is.
“Eight million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of. Sixty million dollars for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty million. Eight million for making mice transgender,” he added.
