“Fox and Friends Weekend” host Charlie Hurt said Thursday that protests against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by “government bureaucrats” would not turn American voters against President Donald Trump.
After the Trump administration began implementing an executive order to reevaluate and realign foreign aid spending, Democratic members of Congress joined protests outside the headquarters of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Treasury Department Tuesday after DOGE Co-Chairman Elon Musk announced plans to shutter USAID. Hurt took aim at the protests, which he said consisted of people who were “three blocks” away.
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“It’s remarkable whenever we see one of these protests, we’ve seen a couple this week with Ed Markey, we’ve seen one with Chuck Schumer, a couple of others,” Hurt told “Varney and Company” host Stuart Varney. “They are trying to get millions or at least thousands of people to march in the streets in Washington, D.C. The problem is they just come three blocks from somewhere else in Washington, D.C. Those are the only people who care about these cuts that DOGE is trying to make to these government practices.”
“The only people who are up in arms about it are government bureaucrats, often unionized government bureaucrats,” Hurt continued. “There’s no movement in the rest of the country among taxpayers, because taxpayers understand what is obvious, and it becomes more obvious the more of these stories that come out, and that is that the government spends wildly on things that have nothing to do in terms of improving their lives.”
Representatives from the DOGE and the State Department gained access to the USAID headquarters Friday night to review the agency’s spending in order to align it with U.S. foreign policy after a brief standoff with employees of the agency, ABC News reported.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the decision to shutter the agency, saying that his concerns about its oversight began when he was in Congress and noting that the agency is “completely unresponsive” and “not functioning” as intended.
USAID provided funding for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an outlet whose reporting on former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City was cited by then-Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s first impeachment. The agency also spent over $100 million in Afghanistan as part of a “democracy project.”
One of the projects frozen by Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order mandating a review of foreign aid was a $50 million grant to Gaza for condoms, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Jan. 29 briefing. USAID additionally spent $45 million on grants to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) scholarships in Burma and $21 million for renewable electricity in Lebanon, the Washington Times reported.
“The attitude that USAID has adopted over the years is ‘no, we are independent of the national interests, we fund programs irrespective of whether it is aligned or not aligned with the foreign policy,” Rubio told reporters while in El Salvador on Monday, adding that the agency had been “completely uncooperative” with oversight efforts.
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa said during a Sunday night discussion with Musk on X that USAID officials threatened her after she sought information on humanitarian aid to Ukraine as part of Congressional oversight.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump proposed establishing a committee led by Musk to review government operations and eliminate waste.
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