Democrats out themselves as corrupt by crying at USAID cuts

OPINION:

Democrats are in an uproar over President Trump’s cutbacks to government waste and have turned such ire toward Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency that they’re vowing to shut down the government.

Only to Democrats does this disgruntlement make sense. Their hatred of all-things-Trump runs so deep, they’re actually making the very public case that corruption shouldn’t be cut — that waste shouldn’t be be outed — that mismanagement of taxpayer funds shouldn’t be curtailed. Either their Trump Derangement Syndrome has killed their critical thinking capacities completely, or they’re afraid, they’re very, very afraid.

Either way, they’re actually fighting the messenger and fighting to keep the corruption.

It’s so bad that even former Bill Clinton apologist and defender James Carville wondered “if there’s [a’] plant’ in progressive wing” of the Democrat Party “to see how many ‘stupid things’ they can embrace,” as one Fox News headline put it.

It is looking very jokey out there.

In honesty, Carville was talking specifically about the Democratic National Committee’s elections for chair, when the former DNC chief, Jaime Harrison, reminded that “our rules specify that when we have a non-binary candidate or office, the non-binary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six offices must be gender balanced with the results of the previous four elections.”

But he may as well have been talking about the entire party’s platform and politics for the past several years. It’s the Democrats, after all, who decided they’d rather die on the sword of transgenderism this past November, and alienate the widest swatch of voters possible, rather than campaign on issues that united citizens or were actually on voters’ minds — like inflation and the economy and the open borders.

Now leftists are doing the same crazy dance with the U.S. Agency for International Development — and to their peril. They’re falling on some interesting swords, for some God-knows-why reasons.

“I am a USAID whistleblower,” Rob Cohen wrote in an opinion piece at Fox News. “I’ve got to admit, Musk is mostly right about the agency’s waste. It would be fair to say that USAID is a baby suffering in filthy bathwater that hasn’t been cleaned for decades.”

Well, that’s graphic. Do tell.

According to the White House, USAID money — taxpayer money — has funded “diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces” to the tune of $15 million; a “DEI musical” in Ireland that cost $70,000; a “transgender opera” in Colombia for $47,000; electric vehicles for Vietnam worth $2.5 million; sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala at $2 million; a “transgender comic book” for Peru at $32,000; tourism in Egypt at $6 million — and more. 

There are the “hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria,” the White House wrote.

There are the “hundreds of millions of dollars to fund [infrastructure improvements] used to support … poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan” — an aid to Taliban members, the White House wrote.

There are funds used for birth control devices in various nations, the White House wrote.

And the response of the Democrats and their partners in the media is to — hate on Musk?

“Billionaire government efficiency chief Elon Musk has repeatedly spread baseless or false claims about the gutted [USAID] on X,” Forbes wrote.

“In Breaking USAID, the Trump Administration May Have Broken the Law,” ProPublica wrote.

“Vatican charity blasts Trump administration’s plan to ‘recklessly’ gut USAID,” PBS wrote.

It’s not reckless to call out wasted uses of tax dollars. 

But if Democrats want to fall on this sword, so be it. As Rep. Ryan Zinke told Newsmax in a recent interview: “Follow the money.”

Where the money transfers go, there will the secrets be revealed. Chances are those who are currently crying the loudest about investigations into USAID are the ones who have the most to hide. Innocent people don’t generally need to conceal their actions.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.