Doctor who survived Ebola highlights risks of Musk’s funding cuts
PBS News Hour - Segments
PBS NewsHour
4.1 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Former USAID employees who've been fired or placed on leave by the Trump administration began |
| 0:06.9 | making their final visits to the agency's headquarters today to pack up their belongings. |
| 0:12.4 | Carrying bags of personal items, workers were surrounded by supporters cheering them on. |
| 0:17.9 | They include Samantha Power, who served as the agency's administrator under President |
| 0:22.2 | Biden. The people who are walking out of this building are American heroes. They did not come |
| 0:28.0 | to U.S. aid for the money. They didn't come for the glory. You know, we rightly honor our men and |
| 0:35.0 | women in uniform. These are heroes who don't wear uniforms. And they are being |
| 0:40.3 | treated in a manner that nobody should treat their worst enemy. And they're being treated that way |
| 0:47.3 | by their own government. With nearly all of the agency's work abroad now suspended, our Laura |
| 0:53.8 | Barone Lopez takes a closer look at |
| 0:55.9 | one USAID effort that's been caught in the political crossfire. |
| 1:00.2 | In a meeting with President Trump's cabinet this week, Elon Musk, the architect of the Trump |
| 1:05.0 | administration's jobs cuts and contract cancellations, defended the actions his team has made |
| 1:10.3 | over the last month. |
| 1:11.6 | We will make mistakes. We won't be perfect. But when we make a mistake, we'll fix it very quickly. |
| 1:17.6 | So for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention. |
| 1:25.6 | I think we all want Ebola prevention. So we |
| 1:28.0 | restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption. But public health experts |
| 1:33.0 | and current and fired USAID workers say Musk is wrong. USAID's Ebola prevention efforts have been |
| 1:39.2 | frozen since the agency was largely dismantled. For more, I'm joined by Dr. Craig Spencer. He's professor at Brown |
| 1:45.0 | University School of Public Health and survived Ebola after treating patients in Guinea with |
| 1:50.0 | doctors without borders in 2014. Dr. Spencer, you heard Elon Musk's claim that Ebola prevention |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PBS NewsHour, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of PBS NewsHour and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

