Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. has continued to provide foreign aid after the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had its programmes frozen pending a review.
“I’m not against foreign aid. I’ve supported foreign aid. We’re going to do foreign aid. No one here is saying we’re going to have zero and some [programmes] already have [survived],” he said in an interview with Catherine Herridge for X.
Rubio said he had no regrets about USAID and argued that some programmes “shouldn’t have ever existed.”
USAID-funded programmes were scrutinised amid the U.S. President Donald Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the U.S. foreign aid agency.
The U.S. billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), referred to the agency as a “criminal organisation” that “needs to die.”
USAID employees worldwide have been put on administrative leave and the agency’s site, including past financial reports, was removed.
