February 7, 2025

Autocrats everywhere.

Here's Samantha Power, writing "I Ran U.S.A.I.D. /Killing It Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere" (NYT).

Of course, she will defend her reign, but what are her most substantive points and does she accept any blame? That's my attitude as I'm reading this to make some excerpts for you. Power begins by listing some things that will seem good to many or most Americans — health programs, "giving girls a chance to get an education," "growing local economies," "helping communities rebuild after ISIS."

She asserts that these activities have "generated vast stores of political capital" for the United States. They have also, she said, been the subject of attacks by China and Russia. Those attacks she calls "propaganda." And what we did... well, that was in the interest of the United States:
After U.S.A.I.D. expanded its partnerships in the Pacific Islands in 2023, Chinese and Russian state-backed media spread disinformation before the 2024 general election in the Solomon Islands. The false claims suggested that U.S.A.I.D. planned to incite riots and orchestrate an electoral coup. Russian intelligence used a new media outlet called African Initiative to smear U.S. health programs in Africa... claiming the programs were covertly carrying out biological testing....

If the claims weren't false, would you tell us?

51 comments:

Dixcus said...

We should do all those good things.

After.

After every American child is fed.

After every American family is housed.

After every American vet is rehabilitated.

After every American dollar of debt is repaid.

And not until then.

A family DROWNING in debt does not donate to charities. That would be reprehensible action ... giving your money away while your own family starves and is impoverished.

Samantha Power should NEVER hold any government job ever again.

Wince said...

Any worthy foreign aid initiatives can be run through the State Department. US AID was structured to be an easy cut-out, and patronage and kick-back haven.

Call Powers before Congress, that’d be interesting.

Jersey Fled said...

Samantha Powers and the New York Times.

Totally believable.

Iman said...

She said, “I know what it’s like to be dead.”

Breezy said...

She was/is one of the rogue insubordinates that Rubio spoke of.

RCOCEAN II said...

On NPR, I heard a Defense of USAID that was similar to that of Powers. All the bad things were skipped over, and the reporter told us USAID helped starving kids in Africa, women "oppressed" in Afghanistan, and was essential to achieve US foreign policy goals.

Lying by omission. You can defend almost any organization (even the Nazi Ss or MAO's Red guards) by focusing on their good side and ignoring everything else.

I don't think anyone is against helping starving kids in Africa. But not only is their massive waste, fraud, and abuse, but USAID is putting a leftwing agenda in large numbers of countries. How would we like it if Russia or whoever was financing NGO's and bribing people to change American Society?

The Cold war is over. We need to stop the imperialism.



Peachy said...

The list of vague good things. (who could argue with that! The hivemind will be impressed. The normals - not.)

Are girls in America held back from a solid and good education?
well - if true at all - it would be because of the corrupt democrat party Teacher's Union. The Teacher's union exists to stuff money in union coffers, hire more lackey bureaucrats - and circle jerk more money back to the Democrat party. Education is the last thing it cares about.

RCOCEAN II said...

"Hey what about starving kids in Africa?" is similar to "Hey, what about parks and libraries?" whenever anyone wants to cut local county or city spending. Its the same ol' scam.

narciso said...

Her lips are moving again shes a wretched scoundrel

Aggie said...

Samantha Powers testified in front of Congress in 2017 that she never tried to unmask records containing information about General Michael Flynn. She did it 7 times. She said she 'didn't recall' ever doing that. Does that sound like an honest person? Bad apple.

narciso said...

Giving billions to the corrupt ocrats in yemen in afghanistan yes that will earn us no good will

RideSpaceMountain said...

Hi,

I’m Samantha Power from the CI...I mean USAID. You may remember me from such films as Who’re All These Weird Foreigners And Countries On Top Of OUR Oil!, Teaching Boys In Botswana To Put Condoms On Bananas Is A Blessing Of Freedom, and What Do You Mean Taxpayer Dollars Can't Pay For Cocaine!?!. Tl;Dr, this entire screed is essentially "but it's different when we do it!" the op-ed, but I'm really hoping it will maintain the illusion for 65yo+ housefrau demographic that worship Oprah and have lesbian crushes on Rachel Maddow.

Really wishing Donald hadn't looked to the right,
Samantha Power

narciso said...

https://www.frontpagemag.com/usaid-sent-over-18-billion-to-islamic-terror-states/

Martin said...

Giving money to various autocrats and even their opponents and saying this money is to educate young girls or feed the hungry in the best case frees up money already had they could have done those things with to be used for nefarious purposes. In most cases in goes directly in the their Swiss bank accounts.

Jaq said...

According to Wikileaks, and based on the fact that ISIS is the terrorist group that only attacks people who are enemies of the CIA, or where the CIA needs a pretext to put our soldiers "to protect" countries, say in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Oh, your window got broken last night? Don't worry, just give us access to skim from your til and we will make sure it doesn't happen again." ISIS is part of a protection racket. They are not abandoning their narrative, they are doubling down on it. They think that their narrative is their ace in the hole and that nobody who matters will see through it.

But yeah, it's not a surprise that Samantha Powers, the person behind so many leaks of intercepted Trump phone calls before and after the 2016 election, the one who did so many "unmaskings" of the transcripts of intercepted phone calls of Trump people, and undoubtedly the one who leaked them to the press, ran AID.

If it was so important, Samantha, why did you allow it to become partisan, and why did you get it involved in domestic politics?

When the anti Trump people destroyed our democratic norms with reckless abandon, that's when this started. Not this week.

Charlie Currie said...

Where ever Samantha Powers shows up, revolution follows. Arab Spring. Color Revolution.

robother said...

"Vast stores of political capital." Can we trade it for, say, Greenland? Maybe the Danes can make better use of all that political capital.

Jaq said...

sorry, according to Wikileaks, we fund ISIS. Arming ISIS was what Ambassador Stevens was doing in Benghazi, buying up all of those weapons floating around after "European defensive alliance" NATO overthrew the government of Libya.

Leland said...

From The Hill, byline John Solomon: ‘Unmasker in Chief’ Samantha Power spewed anti-Trump bias in government emails

They've learned nothing.

Dave Begley said...

In Austin, Texas I asked Samantha Power why she spied on Americans without a warrant. Remember that?

I’ll never forget a beautiful red head coed from UT asked Power if it was acceptable to bring children into a world racked by racism and doomed to burn up. Power danced around and gave her permission, but I was disgusted with how the Left has destroyed and perverted young minds.

The Dems put Power in charge of USAID for a very good reason.

Jaq said...

I am sure that USAID got Solomon pushed out of The Hill, where he did great work.

Peachy said...

It is a disgrace that our vets are not taken care of..
But Joe Biden's son --- is.

narciso said...

https://x.com/BenTallmadge01/status/1887697330318811331 carrying over

Peachy said...

The corrupt left impeached Trump for asking Zelinski to look into Biden family corruption.

that's how corrupt the leftwing machine is.

wendybar said...

NUDGE, NUDGE!!!!

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

The Dems are in complete disarray if they have to trot out the disgraced hyper-partisan to screech "Russian disinformation!" To defend USAID.

narciso said...

It used to be the world bank delivered the payoffs under mcnamara

gilbar said...

Planned Parenthood provides PAP testing for poor women!
This TOTALLY JUSTIFIES their genocide against poor women

Charlie said...

Samantha.......how can we miss you when you won't go away?

donald said...

They need to trot that ugly face to tv so she can make this argument in all transparency.

William said...

I read the article. She points to USAID's efforts in "collaborating with communities in countries like Syria to reduce vulnerability to radicalization". Those efforts apparently could use a little more fine tuning. ....I don't suppose it's possible to spend billions without doing someone somewhere some good. From what I've read though, those billions weren't exclusively spent feeding starving children. There have been many substantive criticisms about the absolute wrong headedness of many of USAID's programs. What was notable about Powers' article is that she did not address a single one of those criticisms......She claims that China and Russia are waging a propaganda war against USAID in places around the world. Maybe so, but if she can't win the propaganda war in the United States, how does she expect to win the propaganda war in Kazakhstan.

tommyesq said...

Fair rewrite of the headline:

Though never elected by anyone, I was given unfettered access to huge swaths of your money, literally taken from your paychecks by force of law (which really means threat of physical force) to spend as I and only I saw fit, with no accountability and no requirement that I even so much as disclose where it went; taking that away from me somehow leads to autocracy.

EdwdLny said...

Usaid is a money laundering scheme, nothing more. Efforts should be made to claw back every dollar. If it ruins people and, or organizations all the better. Ms. Power is incapable of telling the truth. She, like the hildabeast have never had any relationship with the truth. But, then, they are liberals. She and the hildabeast should be swinging in the breeze, by the neck until dead. Perhaps someone will be inclined to do just that, just for fun.

Lazarus said...

The Exile's article about Samantha Power and her now husband and his castoff partner was a cruel classic of the Obama years. It says a lot about our academic and ruling classes in a not undeservedly snarky way.

https://exiledonline.com/all-the-president%E2%80%99s-middlebrows/

Wince said...

Being a child of the 1960s, when I hear of "Samantha Power" I think of Bewitched, except without the good looks and the "tink-a-tink-a-tee" nose twitch able to make good things happen.

Birches said...

What William said at 9:21. It's pretty obvious the swamp did not game out how to handle a prepared, competent Trump administration. They believed their own propaganda.

RCOCEAN II said...

In case anyone's forgotten:

"Power was directly involved in the Obama administration’s surveillance of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and sought to obtain Michael Flynn's redacted identity using an "unmasking" request on at least seven occasions, Fox News Digital previously reported, despite testifying under oath before the House Intelligence Committee that she had "no recollection" of ever making such a request even once."

DarkHelmet said...

The fact that someone like her was in charge of it convinces me that abolishing the agency is a good idea. No more rogue agencies, please.

Congress has to get a big share of the blame for the insanely huge executive branch bureaucracy. Congress creates these agencies and lets the executive do what it wants with them. Regardless of who the executive is at any given time, that's just a bad idea.

Big Mike said...

If Samantha Power was in charge then no wonder USAID went rogue. As others upthread have pointed out, government agencies that abuse their power and, especially, their budgets usually have a couple success stories they can trot out to fool the gullible that their agency is worthwhile. A whole lot of agencies were repurposed during the Obama years to prop up the goals of the World Economic Forum and the Davos crowd (“You will eat bugs and you will be happy”).

I don’t want to eat cockroach soufflés. I support Trump and Musk.

Enigma said...

A very standard government agency practice is to mix the good in with the bad (i.e., the bad is the main objective), and pump up routine or trivial stuff as important. This is a carefully calculated shell game.

I have read literally dozens of federal reports and program descriptions with the cliched lines "This program is VITAL to national interests. It serves an ESSENTIAL function..." Never mind that said program is one of a dozen nearly-identical programs and that they never change or deliver on their promises over decades upon decades. Piglets love to suckle on mommy sow.

Enigma said...

In the words of Weird Al Yankovic:

How come you're always such a fussy young man?
Don't want no Captain Crunch, don't want no Raisin Bran
Well, don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan?
So eat it, just eat it (brr)

Enigma said...

Hang together or hang separately they told themselves. The best defense is a good offense they told themselves. They knew were in DEEP LEGAL TROUBLE with Crossfire Hurricane, and kept digging and digging a hole to China (to hide, and to collect more bribes since they were already there).

Psychopaths have no fear. Psychopaths gravitate to power roles. Once in power they must be cut out with force.

Quaestor said...

Trump isn't "killing" USAID, he's reforming it with the intent of returning that agency to its only goal of advancing our foreign policy at the direction of the President and the State Department, and not the narrow political interests of one and only one party, namely the Democrats, as well as the illicit financial interests of individuals through money laundering of public funds into private wallets.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

It's for the children!!111!!!!!1!!!!!!!

hombre said...

Power has provided a continuation of Obama’s subtle undermining of Israel. Strange that she speaks of “autocrats.” I believe I recall she once suggested using US troops in Israel to impose the two-state solution. I won’t breach the paywall, but I can’t imagine that stifling the corruption at USAID is autocratic.

I hope Rubio will act quickly to reinstate the time sensitive life-saving programs sponsored by USAID. My son lives in Uganda and supports Trump but is very concerned about the closure of a USAID program that has protected thousands of children from fatal diseases there. Failure to do that will sacrifice goodwill among many pro-American nations.

hombre said...

It was predictable that NYT would trot out one of the usual suspects to support USAID. They don’t get how far the brand has fallen.

MacMacConnell said...

Fun read, thanks. Reminds me of the original American Spectator when it was a news paper form.

wendybar said...


Gunther Eagleman™
@GuntherEagleman
·
Follow
BREAKING: Democrats are trying to storm the Department of Education! Maxine Waters and Maxwell Frost are trying to force their way past the guards.

At one point, Waters asks the guards if they have firearms and if they will shoot them.

Is this an insurrection?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1887886184048968079


Chaotic Genius
@realchaosgenius
So when they do it, it’s 'activism,' but if anyone else does, it’s 'insurrection'?
10:31 AM · Feb 7, 2025

mikee said...

Let's just do the math on USAID:
1. (%$$ actual aid)<<<(%$$ program management)
2. (%$$ actual aid)<<<<<<<<<<(total $$)

The ratio on (1) is something like 1 to 5, perhaps 1 to 10, aid versus grift.
The ratio on (2) is something like 1 to 10, perhaps 1 to 20, aid versus grift.

That isn't an aid program, it is grift, graft, money laundering. This is Vanderbilt giving a building to a university, while for himself the robber baron builds the Biltmore Estate.

Antiantifa said...

Defenders of USAID always point to the value of the programs it supports. Detractors are focused on the abuses, including domestic propaganda operations and silly things like Irish trans operas. Both pale in comparison to real reason USAID must go, the staggering fraud and corruption. 65% of the money spent never leaves Washington. Another 25% is hoovered up overseas before it gets to recipients. On average, only about 10% gets through the tangle of NGOs on the take. USAID supports tons of really good causes. Earthquake relief to Haiti was one. In that case, 98% of the money allocated sucked out before it got there. The Haitians got the remaining 2%. Inexcusable.

Michael said...

See-Eye-Eh

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