Fox News host Shannon Bream pressed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Sunday after he defended President Donald Trump and DOGE Chair Elon Musk’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), despite concerns that conservative claims of waste and fraud had been “debunked.”
During an interview on Fox News Sunday, Johnson expressed support for Trump and Musk’s rapid overhaul of USAID, dismissing concerns about the agency’s critical humanitarian role. “I’m not uncomfortable with the pace of this,” Johnson insisted. “He’s fulfilling all of our campaign promises.”
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The Speaker also defended Musk’s controversial involvement, arguing that his team was exposing financial mismanagement. “This idea, you know, all the controversy about Elon Musk helping us out,” Johnson said. “They’re going through to find efficiencies. There has been massive fraud, waste, and abuse of the American taxpayer’s dollars, and this is the best way to do it.
You bring in, effectively, an outside auditor, and that’s what Elon and the team are doing. And what they’re uncovering is incredible abuses of the public.” Johnson claimed that some of the most egregious examples of government waste had been linked to USAID, a longtime target of conservatives who view its foreign aid programs as excessive spending.
Bream, however, pushed back on Johnson’s sweeping allegations. “Some of these have been debunked, or there’s context for them,” she countered. “But there are important things that USAID does as well with food, with medical care, those kinds of things.” She then raised concerns about the consequences of scaling back international aid.
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“But do you worry also the goodwill that may be destroyed and the other actors that may move in when we pull out of some of these really critical funding issues?” she asked. Johnson dismissed the concerns, arguing that necessary programs would be preserved. “We are the good guys,” he said. “And we do some good things, and that in USAID.”
He insisted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his team were methodically reviewing USAID programs to ensure taxpayer money was spent appropriately.
“I am comforted to know that Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, and folks are actually sitting down line by line and going through, eliminating the abuses of taxpayer dollars, and defining and protecting the things that are certainly in America’s interest and are the right thing to do, as you said,” Johnson said. “So we’ll get this sorted out, but I think that that effort is long overdue.”
Despite his reassurances, USAID’s future remains uncertain as Trump and Musk continue their aggressive push to reshape government agencies.
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