In the first episode of the Lotus Seat Podcast, Josh and Stelios discuss the plans to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the world's largest agency for international development, and its impact on the US economy.
00:00:00.060Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Seaters. Today is Monday the 3rd of February, this is episode 1092. I'm your host Stelios and I'm joined by Josh.
00:00:12.200Hello, we didn't plan this by the way, we're not dressed very similarly on purpose. We just sort of turned up this way.
00:00:19.100Next time our ties should be black, to remind people of Pulp Fiction.
00:00:54.080Yeah, we're in no rush, time's no issue is it? No, of course.
00:00:57.580So, one of my favourite developments of the Trump presidency is the discussion around the US Agency for International Development, or USAID.
00:01:08.500And in Trump's very first day, he had this executive order, re-evaluating and realigning United States foreign aid.
00:01:16.560And in it, he had a 90-day pause on all of the things that come under this sort of purview, I suppose.
00:01:24.400And I liked how they framed it, and I can actually scroll down and show you it, rather than just read it myself, but I'll do that anyway.
00:01:32.680The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests, and in many cases antithetical to American values, true.
00:01:39.440They serve to destabilise world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly in verse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and amongst countries.
00:01:52.700And basically is saying that they're going to pause these organisations, because of course it's not only the USAID, but it also comes into other things as well.
00:02:02.220And they're going to review them, and figure out what they're going to do with them.
00:02:39.820As, you know, technology and infrastructure has got better and more efficient, the government has grown, when actually it should do the opposite.
00:02:50.060There's no reason why, when people are using letters and fax, why in the world of email and mobile phones, you need more people to do the same job.
00:03:44.080It's a waste of money, basically, is what it is.
00:03:46.560Because once we see what the money is spent on you, you'll be very, very glad, but probably very, very angry that it happened in the first place.
00:03:54.640So, if you're a US taxpayer, I'm sorry, I'm going to make you very angry.
00:03:58.840However, I'm also going to make you very happy that it's stopped.
00:04:02.340So, quick question before we say more about this.
00:04:07.300It sounds like the executive order that Trump signed is more like a statement of intent that says for three months, foreign aid is going to pause until it's re-evaluated.
00:04:19.700So, yeah, we need also to see what's going to happen after three months.
00:04:23.100I think what they were looking at was potentially folding the USAID, some of the things that were under its purview, into the State Department and getting rid of this.
00:04:32.480And basically trimming a lot of the fat, because, as we will see, there is a lot of fat.
00:04:44.300So, apparently, Elon Musk's team tried to enter the offices of USAID.
00:04:50.160And I'm going to read from The Guardian here, because, of course, they're going to talk about this.
00:04:56.300The demands of wanting to have to see the files, which they're allowed to see, led to a tense standoff during which a senior deputy to Musk threatened to call the US Marshals in to grant access to the building.
00:05:09.460The officials said John Voorhees, no, it's not that kind of, it's not Jason.
00:05:40.280But they were put on leave after that show, which is, you know, if you're directly resisting the will of the president, which they are, because he signed that executive order and Elon Musk is acting on his authority, then you don't deserve to work for the executive branch of government.
00:06:19.240But she served as the administrator for USAID between 2021 and 2025.
00:06:24.600And she'd previously served as an ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017 under Obama.
00:06:31.740So, in her time as an ambassador to the UN, she pushed loads of woke stuff and was pretty hawkish when it came to possible armed interventions abroad.
00:06:42.020It's like the worst of both worlds, really, isn't it?
00:06:44.180It's like, we want to bomb you with rainbow bombs.
00:06:47.240And I see something really interesting there.
00:06:49.780She began her career as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav wars before entering academic administration.
00:06:56.660And she was a member of the Democratic Party and actually very vocally in favor of Obama's policies.
00:10:29.360And until such time as we find out what South Africa is doing, they're taking away land, they're confiscating land, and actually they're doing things that are perhaps far worse than that.
00:10:41.180That's really, really promising that the US is now using its influence to push back against what I would call the genocide of white people in South Africa.
00:11:57.100Why does this government exist in the first place?
00:11:58.880Governmental department, should I say.
00:12:00.140Well, Akele, the president of El Salvador, has a thing or two to say about it.
00:12:06.660And I think he's bang on the money here.
00:12:08.480Most governments don't want USAID funds flowing through their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up.
00:12:15.260While marketed as support for development, democracy and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas and destabilizing movements, which is very true.
00:12:25.000At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects.
00:12:28.240That 10% number has been repeated by Elon Musk and lots of other people that have said that actually most of the money disappears before it reaches its intended target.
00:12:37.460Funny that, isn't it, that free handouts have a habit of disappearing.
00:12:41.200But it carries on to say, before the money reaches real projects to help people in need, and there are many such cases, but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, undermine administrations that refuse to align with globalists' agendas.
00:12:58.640And cutting this so-called aid isn't just beneficial for the United States, it's also a big win for the rest of the world, which I agree with.
00:13:05.000Yeah, I mean, the whole thing, funding corrupt governments in order to just somehow become non-corrupt, is ridiculous.
00:13:39.960USAID stands for U.S. Agency of International Development.
00:13:42.780What it's developing is all these activist organisations in foreign countries that the State Department is building to gain influence, which is true.
00:13:50.380USAID was created to be a central hub that organises all different foreign clandestine operations.
00:13:55.580It has a £50 billion budget. The entire intelligence community is only £72 billion.
00:14:00.740So this is an important comparison here, because I think that there's a pretty good argument to suggest that it's a sort of more public-facing arm of the U.S. intelligence agencies.
00:14:14.220And you can look at the fact that the funding's almost comparable there.
00:14:16.900And it carries on to say, it's more than the CIA and State Department, it's a switch player to assist the Pentagon, the State Department, and the intelligence community.
00:14:56.440Yeah, and that is going to be a company.
00:15:26.440It's accompanied by famous people talking in famous platforms, I'm not naming any of them for known reasons, who are going to say, we need to solve this issue, it's social justice.
00:15:36.800So, Howard, are you going to do it? Fund us. Fund this organisation over there.
00:15:42.080Yeah, I don't see how this is in the interest of the American people, how this money is being spent.
00:15:45.960And then, RFK has talked about how the CIA have used USAID as a front that used $5 billion in 2014 to ignite a colour revolution in Ukraine.
00:15:58.220And Victoria Nuland, that's not her real surname, picked the new government a month before the old government was overthrown.
00:16:04.780Which, looking at some of the leaks from Biden when he was vice president of Obama, and how he's talking as if he's choosing people, and saying, listen, we're going to hold this money back, unless you get rid of this prosecutor, who happens to be involved in prosecuting a company that his son worked for.
00:16:47.140American taxpayer money has funded irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertiliser used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production.
00:16:55.220In Afghanistan, I don't know why they're saying it mainly benefits the Taliban.
00:20:46.160And it's asking for social media companies to agree to policies on strategic silence.
00:20:53.500So, on certain topics, you can strategically silence people.
00:20:58.420Why would the average American taxpayer want to be strategically silenced when they have the constitutional right to free speech and they're paying to have that right deprived?
00:21:17.480Strategy of left-wingers, unfortunately.
00:21:21.420So, here is Mike Benz again, who's been very good on this stuff, saying that the military under Joe Biden and Mark Milley openly plotted to incite race riots in Africa,
00:21:33.240and then used USAID to swoop in and give striking protesters no-show jobs on U.S. taxpayers' dime so they could keep getting paid while striking and protesting in the streets.
00:21:43.540And he was saying that they're paying to destabilize these countries to then get something in return.
00:21:49.940They say, we can make this go away if you do what we want.
00:21:53.000This makes sense because in the previous segment you did about South Africa, if we bear in mind the kind of language that Ramaphosa and his supporters used,
00:22:05.060it is language that is just tailored to a first-year undergraduate audience in Ivy Leagues universities.
00:22:14.220It reads as if he's speaking to Americans.
00:22:45.220So, it's almost like the department was explicitly working to, you know, remove someone from their office that is now in charge of them.
00:22:55.780Kind of makes sense that Trump's removing them then, doesn't it?
00:22:58.900And if you don't have enough reason to be bitter against them, AOC, apparently her career in politics was kick-started by their college program.
00:23:10.100Which, yes, they brought AOC into politics, USAID.
00:23:15.400And another thing as well, this might be important for you, they played a key role in censoring the internet in Brazil.
00:23:24.320I'm pretty sure you've covered this before, haven't you?
00:23:30.020And finally, they've given $15 million to George Soros' Open Society Foundation, which may as well be, you know, the Kick Puppies Foundation or something like that.
00:23:41.780That was only in Obama's, over Obama's last four years, which most probably they'll have given more before.
00:23:51.140And, of course, anyone who's familiar with George Soros and his Open Society Foundation knows that it is a force for great evil in the world.
00:23:59.200Yeah, and especially the last sentence gets me.
00:24:05.560However, the funding was primarily for Soros' operations in Albania and Macedonia, which probably means that he's basically people trafficking.
00:24:12.580Like, there is proof out there of George Soros funding illegals flying into Mexico to break into the southern border.
00:24:21.940But also it's an issue of how this foundation is used in order to destroy identity in the Balkans, for instance, when he's talking about Skopje.
00:24:34.440Yeah, well, obviously USAID is a massive waste of money and is actually counterproductive to the American people's interests, I think.
00:24:46.060What it has been used as is a means of getting political leverage for people who don't have the American people's interests at heart.
00:28:40.240And what happened was that Miss Blonding ordered a vehicle.
00:28:45.500She wanted to enter the vehicle and the driver told her that you can't fit into that vehicle because it's going to be very harmful for that vehicle.
00:42:49.000So the issue is, you walk, you walk into a building and you see the lift says tops, you know, the elevator can only take, can only withstand the weight of X kilograms.
00:43:04.700If you are more than X, you can't sue them for racism.
00:43:12.960I mean, to be fair, I'm quite a tall person.
00:43:16.260When I've been on an airplane, my knees have been digging into the back of the seat in front of me quite often.
00:43:22.640I don't think, you know what, airlines, they hate that I'm tall.
00:43:27.340I think most people are shorter than me.
00:43:29.600The world is designed around the average person.
00:43:32.600And, you know, at least I don't have to get a footstool to reach tall things.
00:43:37.120I'm not going to do the same thing twice in one segment, by the way.
00:43:39.940Yeah, but I want to say people have been exceptionally mean and I do not condone this.
00:43:44.640And they put out memes about forklifts and they draw comparisons about airplanes.
00:43:51.620And they say that, you know, this is an issue, how much the way, you know, how much everything needs to be catered into just essentially covering the needs of each and every person.
00:44:07.140I think that they need to look at certain industries because, you know, with lots of competition, it breeds innovation.
00:44:13.960And I feel like the market for them is, you know, shipping and sea travel rather than air and land.
00:44:21.600I think they're best suited by the way in which they have been made to travel by those means rather than other ones.
00:44:31.280Exactly. So I think that this is a this is a very interesting debate in lawfare.
00:44:36.440And actually, I think that Trump has a lot of work to do because wokeness doesn't end and all this, you know, silliness doesn't end.
00:44:46.640It's also an issue in the States. And this is going to continue.
00:44:52.680Ever devouring. And let's say ever it's a wokeness is something whose hunger can be satiated.
00:45:00.260It does have an insatiable appetite for the consumption of all in its view.
00:45:05.620Exactly. And I will say this because a lot of people are saying this.
00:45:09.360I've started being pessimistic about the about wokeness being going away, especially in the US.
00:45:15.680I think it is it is here to stay. It will come back with a vengeance.
00:45:19.380And the argument is, on the one hand, that they're embarrassing and they're the Democrats need the Bernie bros who are going to highlight the economic issues and go back to a kind of social democracy or a bit more heavy on the traditional working class.
00:45:38.480But I think that nothing stops them from doing both.
00:45:42.680That's true. They can make the same mistake again.
00:45:45.440Yeah. So I think that cases like that, they are going to magnify and amplify.
00:46:09.480Yeah. So I think that people need to be very vigilant and see silly cases of the sort.
00:46:15.140And bear in mind that it's never over.
00:46:18.880People need to people need to remember that what wokeness is just a way of creating artificial divisions and trying to give arbitrary power to those who are entrusted to enforce those divisions.
00:46:32.780And it's kind of it's kind of silly, but I don't think it's going to go away.
01:08:13.160A Chinese company has been taking pictures of people on the toilet and shaming them by leaving their pictures up in the bathroom.
01:08:18.940Apparently, a Chinese company in Shenzhen has received massive criticism after it took extreme measures to punish employees for spending too long in the restroom.
01:08:27.920Li Zheng Daisheng in southern China's Guangdong province resorted to photographing employees using the toilet and subsequently posting the pictures on the restroom wall.