How USAID dismantling could be a preview
President Trump said in a pre-Super Bowl interview that he trusts Elon Musk, who has already exerted massive influence at the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency, especially since Musk is “not gaining anything” in the role.
“I wonder how [Musk] can devote the time to it,” Mr. Trump told Fox News. “He’s so into it.”
The president sat down with Fox News host Bret Baier at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend before Super Bowl LIX between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. Mr. Trump was the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl.
He said he was surprised that no previous sitting president had attended and said he thought it would be “good for the country for a president to be at the game.”
The 2025 Super Bowl was in New Orleans, the site of a New Year’s Day car-ramming terrorist attack that left 14 dead. Mr. Trump was expected Sunday to meet with families of the victims, a White House official said.
The president’s trip to New Orleans comes amid his new administration has moved swiftly to implement its agenda, including an attempt to dismantle USAID, the organization that distributes humanitarian aid in more than 100 countries.
Mr. Trump accused USAID of having “fraud,” although he didn’t name any specifics to Baier.
“We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of money that’s going to places where it shouldn’t be going,” he said. “Where, if I read a list, you’d say, this is ridiculous, and you’ve read the same lists, and there are many that you haven’t even seen. It’s crazy. It’s a big scam.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told foreign leaders on Wednesday that the “U.S. is not walking away from foreign aid” but recipients of U.S. aid would need to better explain themselves, according to a transcript of his remarks. Under the Trump administration’s planned overhaul, USAID will be merged with the State Department under Rubio’s review.
“Now there’s some good money, and we can do that through any one of a number,” Mr. Trump said. “I think I’d rather give it to Marco Rubio over at the State Department. Let him take care of the few good ones. So I don’t know if it’s kickbacks or what’s going on. But the people — look I ran on this, and the people want me to find it, and I’ve had a great help with Elon Musk, who’s been terrific.”
Musk has targeted USAID in particular, with the agency’s chief of staff having resigned last weekend along with two top security staffers after blocking access to USAID systems to DOGE. After the resignations, Musk posted on his social media platform X “we’re shutting it down,” talking about USAID. It kicked off a week of uncertainty that ended with USAID’s signage stripped from its D.C. headquarters on Friday.
Although the Trump administration had moved to put 2,200 USAID employees on administrative leave, a federal judge on Friday blocked it from going into effect. The Congressional Research Office, meanwhile, says Mr. Trump does not have the authority to dismantle USAID since the agency was created by Congress.
Mr. Trump said “I told [Musk] do that” about USAID, and the president added that he was going to tell Musk to “go check the Department of Education.” The president has said he wants to dismantle the Department of Education.
“Then I’m going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s going to find the same thing. Then I’m going to go to the military. Let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. But I campaigned on this.”
The president also said he’s serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was caught on a hot mic Friday saying Mr. Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st U.S. state is “a real thing,” local media reported.
Mr. Trump is only the second president in history to be elected to nonconsecutive terms, and told Baier that one of the differences between his administrations is he had “tremendous opposition” and he didn’t “have the kind of support that I needed ” in his first term.
“I put people in office, some great, some really great ones, but I had some that I wouldn’t have put,” Mr. Trump said. “I would have, you know, known better if it were a couple of years later, if I had a little more experience in D.C., I was a New York person, not a D.C. person, and I had a lot of opposition.”
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Caroline Linton is an associate managing editor on the political team for CBSNews.com. She has previously written for The Daily Beast, Newsweek and amNewYork.
