Bono has joined Barack Obama and George W. Bush in paying tribute to the U.S. Agency for International Development workers whom Donald Trump has fired.
The U2 singer has publicly called out the decision made by the President to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) before, going on Joe Rogan’s podcast and claiming that the cuts will cause more than 300,000 deaths around the world.
Now, he has hit out again, joining fellow Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush on Monday (June 30) to share an emotional farewell to the workers who have been laid off.
In a video address, which was not shared publicly but has been reported by Associated Press, the Irish singer praised the USAID workers as “secret agents of international development” and recited a poem he had written to celebrate the agency.
AP claimed that this also made reference to the children who, he claimed, will die of malnutrition without their aid, as well as celebrating the lifesaving work USAID did around the world. This included providing clean water and food supplies to millions affected by war globally, and working to prevent disease outbreaks. “They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,” he added.
The decision to dismantle USAID came on Trump’s first day back in office, when he issued an order halting all foreign assistance funding and reviewing all foreign USAID programmes. The agency was developed by John F. Kennedy in a bid to promote US national security by creating goodwill abroad.
As per Billboard, he claimed that their focus on disaster and poverty release was part of a “radical left lunatic” agenda and an example of “waste, fraud and abuse” in government. The decision to dismantle the agency was accelerated by Elon Musk’s DOGE department, which pushed to radically reduce spending through deep cuts to funding.
With their contributions to the video, both Obama and Bush broke traditional protocol by criticising the decision made by the current President’s administration. In his comments, Obama called the USAID closure a “colossal mistake”.
“Your work has mattered and will matter for generations to come,” he said. “Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy. Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world… Sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realise how much you are needed.”
Bush added: “You’ve shown the great strength of America through your work, and that is your good heart. Is it in our national interests that 25million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”
As well as Bono, another artist to have spoken out about the political decision is Bob Geldof, who recently spoke to NME about the impact of Musk’s DOGE role on international aid.
When asked whether another Live Aid would be possible, he said: “It’s different now. It’ll happen through something like this. How? I’ve no idea because I don’t do social media. It’s an isolating technology, unlike rock ’n’ roll, which is a gathering technology. That’s the problem.
“Musk – that ketamine-crazed fool, that sociopath – recently said that the great weakness of Western civilisation is empathy. No Elon, the glue of civilisation is empathy. We’re in the age of the death of kindness, and I object,” he added. “We’re back to a terrible selfishness.”
