CNN political analyst Mark Preston said Friday that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has become a “loser” for Democrats during an interview.
After the Trump administration began implementing a Jan. 20 executive order to reevaluate and realign foreign aid spending, Democratic members of Congress joined protests outside the headquarters of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Treasury Department Tuesday after DOGE Chairman Elon Musk announced plans to close down UAID. Preston said that many of the programs USAID funded were being used to attack the agency.
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“I think they are looking at it as a huge success because no one’s been able to stop them,” Preston told “CNN News Central co-host Kate Bolduan about the Trump administration’s efforts to close the agency. “And in fact, in Washington, they’re telling Democrats to let USAID go, just let it go because it’s a loser and it’s a loser in the sense that you can go through and pick out any program in USAID, and you can make a case about why the United States shouldn’t be using its tax dollars to spend overseas.”
Representatives from DOGE and the State Department gained access to the USAID headquarters on Jan. 31 to review the agency’s spending in order to align it with U.S. foreign policy after a brief standoff with employees of the agency, ABC News reported.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the decision to shutter the agency Monday during a press conference in El Salvador, saying that his concerns about its oversight began when he was in Congress and noting that the agency is “completely unresponsive” and “not functioning” as intended.
Bolduan noted that Preston’s comments about USAID being connected with American intelligence agencies meant it was seen as a “good investment” by Washington insiders.
“However, you can still go through and find out something about condoms or about abortions or about something that is going to upset some people,” Preston responded. “But what is amazing, though, Kate, is that if they’re able to do it with USAID, are they going to be able to do it with every bit of government? And honestly, I don’t know who can stop them at this point.”
USAID provided funding for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an outlet whose reporting on former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City was cited by then-Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s first impeachment. The agency also spent over $100 million in Afghanistan as part of a “democracy project.”
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Preston then attacked Republicans for not standing up to Trump and Musk for the agency.
“They’ve abdicated the one-third power of government that the framers created when they created our country, our nation here… There’s the executive, the legislative and the judicial,” Preston said. “Right now, Donald Trump owns all three. So, I don’t see Republicans pushing back at all on what Donald Trump wants. As far as Democrats go, I mean, right now, um, they’re toothless. They’re toothless. At this point, they don’t seem to have a coherent message. There’s certainly no leader right now, not to say that we should, uh, be critical of them because of that.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.