This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

President Donald Trump unleashed an angry, unhinged rant on Thursday about the U.S. Agency for International Development.

He claimed billions of dollars had been stolen there, and that much of the money has gone to the pro-democrat media, which he described as a huge scandal. But only a few hours later,

CNN posted video of Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly praising USAID in the past,

and describing foreign aid as very much in America's national interests.

All this raises a question. What kind of a position will Rubio, as Secretary of State, be put in

if Trump and Elon Musk continue their effort to destroy USAID? What will the fallout be for America's

place in the world, And what will the global humanitarian

consequences be? Today we're talking about all of this with Jeremy Kynindyke, a former senior

official during the Obama and Biden administrations. Jeremy, thanks so much for coming on.

My pleasure, Greg. So on truth social, Trump raged about USAID, saying, looks like billions of

dollars have been stolen at USAID and other agencies, much of it going to the fake news media as a payoff

for creating good stories about the Democrats. He claimed millions of dollars went to Politico.

The whole thing is a ridiculous

invention. What's really going on is many government agencies have paid for many media

subscriptions. And this is a fairly common occurrence under all kinds of different administrations.

And this has nothing whatsoever to do with helping Democrats. But critically, Jeremy,

Elon Musk elevated this nonsense. Elon has said Trump has given him permission to shut down USAID. A lot of funding has already

been halted. Can you walk us through what the consequences of that have already been in the world?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And really, I think starting there, that this is a

concerted disinformation campaign driven by Elon Musk with a lot of amplification from the president

...