U2 frontman schooled podcaster Joe Rogan on his frequent support and defense of Elon Musk.
The singer discussed the impact of the Trump administration and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s proposed cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — which is considered the largest source of international aid to more than 120 countries via delivering food programs, clean water and infectious disease medical assistance. The organization’s efforts are often credited for saving lives at the cost of pennies on the dollar.
Bono has been undertaking humanitarian trips to Africa and other nations since the early 1980s and has a history of working with USAID. He cited a study that estimated the DOGE cuts to the department will result in more than 300,000 deaths worldwide — more than 200,000 of them children suffering from malnutrition, malaria and pneumonia. The cuts, he claimed, have already resulted in food, water and medical aide being stranded due to mass layoffs.
“There’s food rotting in boats and warehouses,” Bono said. “There is 50,000 tons of food. The people who knew the codes — who were responsible for distributing that aid — were fired. That’s not America, is it?”
Bono said he understands why people would want to downsize big government but says steep cuts to the popular charity program already have disastrous consequences.
“To destroy, to vandalize, it felt like with glee, that these life support systems were being pulled out of the walls,” Bono says, and cited a story in Christianity Today: “[One aide worker said], ‘We don’t have the funds, we have to choose which child to pull off the IVs.’ It just seems to me, I don’t know if ‘evil’ is too strong a word, but what we know about pure evil is that it rejoices in the deaths, in the squandering of human life — particularly children. It actually rejoices in it. And whether it’s incompetence, whether it’s unintended consequences, it’s not too late for people.”
Bono added that he has even attempted to address the issue with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who the singer says is “convinced people aren’t dying yet.”
Rogan pushed back, calling USAID a “money-laundering operation” that has lost “trillions” with “no oversight, no receipts.”
That said, Rogan added, “But also, we help the world and when you’re talking about making wells for people in the Congo to get fresh water, when you’re talking about food and medicine to places that don’t have access, no way that should have been cut out. And that should have been clear before they make these radical cuts. There’s got to be a way to keep aide and not have fraud.”
Rogan added, “The ironic thing is, even though Elon Musk has proposed all these things and the DOGE committee has proposed all these things, they’ve made no cuts in terms of the budget. They’ve cut nothing.”
Musk posted a clip of Bono and fired back on X: “He’s such a liar/idiot. Zero people have died!”
Musk and Rubio’s insistence that no one has yet died could be referring to the fact the 300,000 deaths report is a prediction of the number of deaths rather than saying those deaths have already occurred.
In the Christianity Today story that Bono cited, workers on the ground said there have already been cuts to funding and suggested children would begin dying soon. One aide worker said, “I do think we can expect to see increased mortality rates, increased infection, and increased despair if things aren’t corrected.” Also, Bono’s quote cited about pulling children off IVs was indeed a prediction rather than a current statement of fact. But according to Brooke Nichols — the mathematician and professor of infectious diseases at Boston University who created the prediction model — tens of thousands likely have already died.
“Because I’ve been doing HIV [research] for so long, I just assumed that would be where the biggest impact would occur,” Nichols told The Times UK. “But I was really shocked by the child deaths from diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. Tens of thousands of children have died because we’ve pulled out our funding from diarrhea, pneumonia and food programs.”
The bottom line seems to be: Humanitarian workers say the Trump administration’s actions are already having a dire impact on the ground, but there is some debate over how many deaths, if any, have already occurred. But all experts seem to agree the proposed cuts (which reportedly will reduce USAID spending by 80 percent) will be devastating and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths if fully implemented and/or more time passes without the administration stepping up.
Previously, Bill Gates similarly chastised Musk for the cuts to The Financial Times, saying, “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”
The news comes amid Musk stepping down from his official White House role and a New York Times report which claimed the billionaire took copious amounts of ketamine and other drugs during his time running DOGE. Musk has called the report “bs” and said the number of meetings and photographs he was in would make such use impossible.
During the podcast, Bono further warned against the Trump administration’s isolationist impulses in general.
“I just want to remind Americans of the size of their country, and I’m not talking about the geography,” Bono said. “The size of the idea, it’s just an extraordinary thing. It’s an idea big enough to fit the whole world, and when it becomes an island rather than a continent … when it shrinks, America seems to stop being America.”
