OAN Staff Blake Wolf
9:16 AM – Sunday, June 1, 2025
U2 lead-singer Bono slammed the Trump administration for shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), claiming that the closure was responsible for 300,000 deaths.
Paul David Hewson, known by his stage name Bono, claimed that the Trump administration was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
“Just recent report, it’s not proven, but there’s surveillance enough [to] suggest 300,000 people have already died from just this cut off, this hard cut, of USAID so there’s food rotting in boats, in warehouses, this will f*** you off,” Bono stated.
Advertisement
“There is 50,000 tons of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai, and wait for it Houston, Texas, that is rotting rather than going to Gaza, rather than going to Sudan, because the people who know the codes for the warehouse are fired, they’re done,” Bono continued. “What is that? That’s not America, is it?”
Rogan shot back, acknowledging that while USAID may have done some good humanitarian work, the agency was clearly also a “money laundering operation.”
“They’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” Rogan stated.
“The problem is – for sure there have been a lot of organizations that have done tremendous good all throughout the world. Also for sure it was a money laundering operation. For sure there was no oversight, for sure billions of dollars are missing – in fact trillions that are unaccounted for,” he continued.
“The way Elon Musk described it he said, ‘If any of this was done by a public company the company would be delisted and the executives would be in prison, but in the United States this is standard.’ When Biden left office – when it was clear that Trump won in the 73 days, they spent 93 billion dollars from the Department of Energy on just radical loans, just throwing money into places and there’s no oversight, no receipts,” Rogan added.
Bono’s claim that 300,000 people died as a result of USAID cuts appears to be in reference to a speculative projection conducted by Boston University mathematical health modeler Brooke Nichols, who projected what may happen rather than reporting confirmed deaths.
Meanwhile, Musk and others took to social media to bat down Bono’s claims, with Musk responding to the clip in an X post, stating: “He’s such a liar/idiot Zero people have died!”
“These USAID numbers are f***in faker than their COVID numbers,” wrote Mike Benz, a former State Department official turned internet personality.
It is yet to be seen whether the Trump administration’s bid to completely close down USAID will be successful after an Obama-appointed Judge ruled against the closure in March.
Stay informed! Receive breaking news alerts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts