The Tucker Carlson Show
Mike Benz Takes Us Down the USAID Rabbit Hole (It’s Worse Than You Think)
Sat, 08 Feb 2025
Mike Benz: “USAID is effectively a rent-a-riot operation. That raises questions about the Black Lives Matter protests.” (00:00) The USAID Rabbit Hole Runs Deep (05:29) Trump Is Performing Open Heart Surgery on the Country (09:50) Is USAID Truly a Humanitarian Operation? (19:41) What Is the Point of Funding Transgender Surgeries in Foreign Countries? (27:13) How USAID Secretly Organizes Riots Around the World (50:23) Is The Blob a Necessary Evil? (57:24) Joe Biden and USAID’s Role in Social Media Censorship Paid partnerships with: ExpressVPN: Get 4 extra months free at https://ExpressVPN.com/Tucker Heritage Foundation: https://Heritage.org/Tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How Does USAID Influence Global Politics?
And he goes, okay, okay, layer two of my defense is there's $14 trillion worth of natural resources under the soil there. So, you know, having it be a U.S. vassal state is advantage to us because then we can exploit those $14 trillion worth of resources. I mean, that's what's implied there, right? Why would Americans benefit from Ukrainians exploiting that $14 trillion?
Now, by the way, that's not a knock on Ukraine, but you simply saw that shift happen When, you know, as it got harder and harder to defend it on the basis of democracy promotion, the mask had to slip in order to defend it at the deeper level. To let people in, okay, here's why we're really doing it. And every USAID program operates that way. It is...
getting back to this rock in the hard place analogy is that they want to say it's humanitarian aid, but it's clearly done so much harm in so many places. It's doing such terrible things, funding the Wuhan lab, you know, not to mention, you know, the whole rest of the USA Truman show, but then they go, okay, okay, well, it's US soft power. It advances US strategic interests.
And so you say, oh, okay, so it's not aid? And then it becomes very schizophrenic to defend this thing because it's a labyrinth of lies. USAID's access and its reputation completely depends on its perception as being a kind of quasi-charity, even though, you know, charity is nowhere to be found. It's a U.S., foreign policy instrument. Aid isn't even in the name.
I've said this many times, but it's the Agency for International Development. And when you see aid, it's your mind playing tricks on you.
And by the way, growing up, my dad worked with USAID. It was called USAID, not USAID. To make it clear to everybody, it was not an aid organization. Now they call it USAID.
Right. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, I'm sure in the Ronald Reagan building, you know, but how it's colloquially known, I mean, and how it's described to the voters, it's described as humanitarian assistance. And you go, okay, well, you know, and we can get into the depth of the scandals, but...
I guess the fundamental feeling that I have right now is this is going to get a lot worse as people go through this self-discovery process of what's happening. We were talking a little bit earlier where I mentioned eight years ago when I was writing my little book,
book attempt to try to explain everything that was happening in internet censorship and I felt like I had to explain all these other tectonic plates of American society and global affairs just to understand who and what and why they're censoring the internet.
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Chapter 2: What Are the Implications of USAID's Actions on U.S. Foreign Policy?
And we talked about the 97 percent of employees at USAID who donate to Democrats. But to me, the main issue here is the remnant of internationalist Republicans in Congress who can form a critical majority block with in the House or in the Senate in order to. get their way on this issue.
You could see a situation where their own vested interests, their own constituents are so dependent on either USAID's funding or the results of USAID operations that they will side with the Democrats in order to inflict damage on the Trump White House budget vision. And so that's going to be a constant fight. And my
What I'm hoping evolves over the next weeks and months is a moral north star for America first nationalist or populist or MAGA or centrist or simply reasonable liberal or center left folks where you have the current level of American prosperity. You remove that evil in the labyrinth of lies and Something needs to fill that gap.
You know, like we talked about in the oil and gas spaces, drill, baby, drill for oil. Okay, but now do that for semiconductors. And now do that for every critical mineral. And...
Maybe the answer is, I mean, what I've been trying to sell is that if you're going to do the dirty deeds and you do believe they're necessary for statecraft, then there has to at least be an obligation to be honest about them.
You know, like I thought it was very honest, you know, when Lindsey Graham finally came out and said the strategic vision of the United States is the, you know, the $14 trillion worth of natural resources. Yeah.
Relying on the humanitarian predicate for it allows voters to be deceived and for them to then turn around and feel totally hoodwinked when they find out that, hey, why are you paying for the unions, the media companies, the things that are acting here on the homeland? We have this tumor that we're removing from the body of the American project.
But there was blood flowing into that and it's connected to all these arteries. The thing that I want to make sure happened that is midwifed appropriately is what are you changing about our foreign policy structure so that when you remove the tumor, the blood still flows in the way that you want it to. You're not ripping the heart out with open heart surgery.
I get it. I'm just less confident than you are that we're reaping some massive reward for this. I mean, I remember people muttering darkly about, you know, the purpose of the Iraq war in 2003 was to seize the oil in Iraq. Well, that didn't happen. Didn't happen in Libya. I mean, I don't – it's hard to – I guess I don't have a clear picture of the material benefits that we're receiving from this.
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