The DOGE Alum Asking if Foreign Aid Is America’s Problem

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Ross Douthat, News, New York Times, Journalism

4.2 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

Does America have a moral obligation to the world? The former Department of Government Efficiency staffer Jeremy Lewin, now deputy administrator for the United States Agency for International Development, explains how he is implementing President Trump’s foreign aid philosophy and what it means for humanitarian assistance going forward.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Dauford, and this is Interesting Times. Doge's cuts to USAID aren't just a case study in the Trump administration going after woke spending or trying to change the federal government's bottom line.
0:33.9	It was also crucial to a larger shift in foreign policy strategy, a change in how the U.S.
0:40.0	does aid and development work, in how it promotes democracy around the world, and in the way it
0:45.0	relates to foreign governments, where the whole apparatus that the U.S. has used traditionally
0:50.4	to exercise soft power is being gutted, redirected, and transformed.
0:56.7	And it's still unclear, even to me, where America's humanitarian mission, programs
1:02.1	like PEPFAR, the AIDS Fighting Initiative, fit into the new vision of America first.
1:09.0	My guest today is well positioned to bring some clarity to this shift in strategy and values.
1:14.9	Jeremy Lewin is a youthful veteran of Doge, a 28-year-old with no government experience before January,
1:22.4	who's now a State Department official in charge of implementing the administration's sweeping changes to foreign aid and development work.
1:31.7	Jeremy Lewin, welcome to interesting times.
1:35.2	Thank you so much for having me. I'm really great to be here. So we're going to talk about policy, about the transformation of foreign aid, especially, and how the Trump administration sees America's humanitarian obligations. But first, I want to talk a little bit about your own career and background
2:02.3	and how you ended up as a senior bureau official for the Office of Foreign Assistance.
2:08.4	So you came into the government through Doge, right, the Department of Government Efficiency.
2:14.5	Yeah, that's right. So, you know, the president won a resounding victory in
2:19.5	November. I was going about my life in Los Angeles in the private sector. And a friend of mine who
2:25.0	worked with Elon Musk. I'd never met Elon in my life. But he worked with Elon and sort of had
2:31.3	become one of the first employees in what was then Doge as part of the Trump administration's transition effort called me up and said,
2:38.1	hey, you know, I think you'd be a really good fit for this.
2:40.5	Do you want to sort of join the effort?
2:42.7	And at first I was sort of reluctant.
2:45.0	I never sort of viewed myself as having a career in government, partly because the way
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