Feb. 3: ‘The Heart of the Deep State Beast’

Trump unveils tariffs; Bibi visits Washington; Venezuela releases hostages

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The Big Story

In recent days, the Trump administration has stepped up its war on the U.S. Agency for International Aid and Development (USAID), responsible for about half of all U.S. foreign assistance.

The agency has been in the administration’s sights from day one. In a week-one executive order, President Donald Trump demanded a 90-day pause on all new foreign aid programs pending a review of whether they were consistent with the U.S. national interest. By the end of Trump’s first week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had ordered a freeze on all USAID funding, and by the following Monday, Jan. 27, at least 56 senior USAID officials had been placed on paid administrative leave, according to the Associated Press. Then, in a series of weekend X posts, Elon Musk began rallying online supporters behind the wholesale destruction of the agency, calling it, variously, a “criminal organization,” a “bowl of worms,” and “beyond repair.” On Monday morning, agency staff received an email informing them that USAID’s Washington headquarters would be closed to staff, and Musk said in an X Spaces conversation that he had spoken about USAID with the president, who agreed that “we should shut it down”—though Trump himself has said only that his administration is getting the “lunatics” out of USAID, “and then we’ll make a decision.”

Musk’s posts led to a frenzy on social media, as dozens of accounts began scouring public records to highlight some of the most absurd grants issued by USAID (2023 budget: $72 billion) over the past decade. These included funding for bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and hundreds of millions of dollars funneled to progressive nonprofit groups in the United States and abroad. To take one example that achieved wide circulation, USAID, under the leadership of Biden-appointed Samantha Power, awarded a $20 million grant to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which then donated to the Arabella Advisors-controlled Hopewell Fund. The Hopewell Fund in turn donated $2 million to Defending Democracy Together, a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization run by the Democratic operative Bill Kristol. While it’s impossible to establish that the specific dollars granted to Rockefeller by USAID landed in Kristol’s bank account (it probably didn’t), money is fungible, and the whole progressive NGO complex, with its multiple layers of shell groups and untraceable donations, is organized precisely to obscure such connections.

Here’s another fun example, dug up by Tablet’s Tony Badran. The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the American Task Force on Lebanon (ATFL) are two related 501(c)(3) nonprofits connected to the Fares family, a wealthy clan of Lebanese businessmen helmed by patriarch and former Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares and one of his sons, the influential Houston-based donor Nijad Fares (The current CEO of MEI served as director of the Fares Foundation for seven years before moving over to the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut,). The Obama and Biden administrations used MEI and ATFL as messaging amplifiers for their various pro-Iranian schemes in Lebanon, in return for which the Fares family received U.S. taxpayer-funded investment in their various pet projects. For instance, in 2022, Power’s USAID sent $50 million to three universities in Lebanon, including the American University in Beirut—home of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs. Eight days after these grants were announced, Power appeared in a USAID “special debrief” on Zoom with members of the “Lebanese American community,” one of whom was none other than Nijad Fares.

So it’s fair to say that USAID, in its current iteration, is a swamp of corruption and Democratic patronage. We agree entirely with U.S. special missions envoy Richard Grenell, who in an X post called for an “investigation” of Power’s use of USAID money to fund “radical programs and far Left activists.”

At the same time, an influential portion of MAGA-branded social media began demanding the eradication of USAID on the grounds that it is a “CIA front” (nope) and “the heart of the deep state beast” (it’s not) and accusing it of … supporting the opposition in authoritarian and/or anti-American foreign countries (the horror!). Some of these arguments—to our eyes, at least—looked a lot like a foreign influence operation: for instance, the below commentary from James Li, a “correspondent” for “Breaking Points” Commentary, who, in a viral X thread, took USAID to task for funding the pro-U.S. opposition in Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela.

Elsewhere on his profile, Mr. Li refers to Benjamin Netanyahu as the “U.S. Commander ‘n Chief” and explains to his followers that the Zionists are behind the TikTok ban:

You get the picture.

Back in the real world, Rubio announced on Monday afternoon that he had assumed the position of acting director of USAID. In a press conference in El Salvador, where Rubio is on an official visit, the secretary explained that the shake-up at the agency is intended to bring it back under the control of the elected branches of government and to ensure that its activities are in the national interest. While the future of the agency is unclear, Rubio said there are “things we do through USAID that we should continue to do” and “will continue to do,” but these needed to be aligned with the “national interest and the foreign policy of the United States.” He added that USAID had become a “completely unresponsive agency.”

We reached out to Lee Smith, who spent much of his Sunday heroically arguing on social media that it is not in the United States’ interest to unilaterally abandon efforts to influence politics abroad. He wrote to The Scroll in an email:

It’s a relief to hear USAID will now be administered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The agency long ago deviated from, or simply undermined, its original mission, which is to use aid to shape outcomes abroad by weakening our adversaries. No one in their right mind wants U.S. taxpayer money used to promote the progressive movement’s boutique causes, many of which are either irrelevant or distasteful to the foreign societies we are trying to shape. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen the last few days are objections not to the nature of the spending but to the purpose of the mission.

For instance, I saw one account complaining that USAID was used to promote groups opposing communist regimes in the Western hemisphere, like Venezuela and Cuba. One “critic” even objected to USAID projects in the 1970s that opposed [Chilean President Salvador] Allende and built up [Augusto] Pinochet—but that was precisely the purpose the JFK administration designed USAID for: to advance U.S. interests and counter our adversaries, of which there are many in this hemisphere and further afield. These rants, inspired by top social media influencers ostensibly allied with MAGA, underscore two big issues:

1) In two weeks, Trump has shown that with the right initiative and effort, U.S. institutions can be fixed and restored to their original purpose—to protect and serve the U.S. public and enhance our peace and advance our prosperity. The orgiastic frenzy set to burn everything down is (1) a negation of MAGA and (2) exposes Americans to danger.

2) It can hardly come as any surprise that hostile foreign powers see this eruption of what has become self-lacerating resentment as an opportunity to throw tinder and indeed gas on the fire to inspire Americans to burn everything down. The bulk of the blame is on those U.S. officials who have abused these resources and programs for decades. But that hardly rationalizes making ourselves vulnerable to dangerous actors domestic and foreign who do not wish us well.

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The Rest

→President Trump announced on Saturday that his administration would level sweeping 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, 10% tariffs on Canadian energy products, and 10% tariffs on goods from China. The tariffs are set to take effect Tuesday, though even that remains unclear; on Monday morning, Trump announced that the tariffs on Mexico had been paused for a month after a “very friendly” conversation with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum “wherein she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican Soldiers on the Border.” As Wall Street Journal columnist Greg Ip observes, the tariff announcements shocked observers in Washington, on Wall Street, and in Ottawa and Mexico City who assumed that the measures would be too economically damaging for Trump to implement. That was, obviously, wrong, but as the pause on the Mexico tariffs indicates, the administration appears to be using the tariffs as leverage for negotiations on cross-border drug trafficking and illegal immigration—though the Canadians have insisted that neither is a major issue along the U.S.-Canadian border. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke twice on Monday; we expect that heated negotiations are going on behind closed doors, but no pause had been announced at the time of our writing.

→Donald Trump, political geographer:

→Two Bibi updates:

1. Netanyahu arrived in Washington, D.C., on Sunday for his planned Tuesday meeting with Trump, making him the first foreign leader to make an official visit to the United States. The meeting is expected to focus on the maintenance of the cease-fire in Gaza, but Trump has been sending several friendly smoke signals to the Israelis recently. In addition to his repeated expressions of interest in the relocation of Gazan refugees outside of the Strip, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Trump had requested Congress to approve an additional $1 billion in weapons sales to Israel, reportedly including $700 million worth of bombs and $300 million worth of armored bulldozers.

2. Netanyahu appointed Jewish News Syndicate columnist Caroline Glick to his public diplomacy team, and Glick is accompanying the prime minister on his trip to the United States. In addition to being a penetrating analyst of geopolitics in the Middle East—and one who has embraced such Tabletisms as Lebanon = Hezbollah—Glick is a friend of The Scroll. She sat for an interview with us in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, which you can read in The Back Pages of our Oct. 10, 2023, edition.

→Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Muhammed al-Jolani), who was formally appointed to his position last week, traveled to Saudi Arabia on Sunday for his first official foreign visit. The Saudis, along with other Sunni Arab states such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, have embraced the new Syrian government, and their government in Riyadh is reportedly now lobbying Western governments to lift the sanctions on Syria imposed during the long reign of the Assad family. Al-Monitor notes that while Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman have all cabled their official congratulations to Sharaa, Syria’s former allies, Iran and Russia, have either refrained from commenting on Sharaa’s appointment or declined to name him specifically.

→We mentioned on Friday that during her confirmation hearing, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard appeared to set herself at odds with the Trump administration’s generally positive stance toward the new Syrian government, declaring that she “hate[s] al-Qaeda” and that the new government of Syria is an “al-Qaeda offshoot” led by an “Islamic jihadist” and “many who were responsible for the killing of American soldiers.” In an appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show” last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio illustrated our point by delivering the following statement on Syria:

In Syria, a group has taken over. These are not guys that would necessarily pass an FBI background check, per se. But if there is an opportunity in Syria to create a more stable place than what we’ve had historically, especially under Assad, where Iran and Russia dominated and where ISIS operated with impunity, we need to pursue that opportunity and see where that leads.

Secretary of state outranks DNI, last we checked, so we’re going to assume that it’s Rubio, not Gabbard, who is articulating the United States’ real policy.

→Venezuela released six American hostages on Friday and agreed to accept repatriation flights of its citizens deported from the United States following a visit from U.S. special missions envoy Ric Grenell. Although U.S. special envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone said Friday that Grenell’s meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—which resulted in the six hostages (out of nine in the country) being cleared to fly back to the United States with Grenell—was “not a negotiation in exchange for anything,” the Venezuelan government struck a somewhat different note in its public comments. According to the Venezuelans’ readout of the meeting, Maduro and Grenell discussed U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, and Maduro said he “would be looking to see if what had been discussed with Grenell was reflected in what is communicated by the U.S. about the meeting,” according to NBC. Our guess is that something was promised—or at least dangled in front of—the Venezuelans, on the ancient principle that you never get anything for free.

→David Hogg, the 24-year-old liberal activist and survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting, was elected vice chair of the Democratic National Committee over the weekend. In electing Hogg, a lab-grown avatar of social media progressivism who has endorsed every woke fad from “abolish ICE” and “defund the police” to childlessness to save the planet, delegates defied the advice of one David Hogg …