How Elon Musk boosted false USAID conspiracy theories to shut down global aid
Musk drove fringe viewpoints on USAID into the mainstream on X as the Trump administration halted the humanitarian relief agency’s work.
USAID employees to be placed on leave, CIA workers offered buyouts in government shakeu
Feb. 7, 2025, 4:00 AM CST
By Brandy Zadrozny and Lora Kolodny, CNBC
Until recently, Elon Musk seldom posted about the U.S. Agency for International Development on X, where he is wont to share his thoughts on nearly every subject.
Then on Sunday came a flurry of posts wherein the world’s richest person, the Trump-appointed head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, described USAID, the foreign humanitarian assistance agency, as “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” “evil” and “a criminal organization.”
“Time for it to die,” Musk posted.
 Elon Musk has moved quickly to make changes in the federal government through DOGE.Kenny Holston / Pool via Getty Images fileMusk’s sudden — and consequential — interest in USAID did not emerge from a vacuum: The agency has long been a target of criticism that its aid programs masked nation-meddling and overspent American tax dollars abroad. Some conspiracy theories alleged that the global humanitarian programs were a cover for biowarfare research or that USAID’s funding enriched an elite few who control the world.
But until very recently, those claimswere largely outside the mainstream, and USAID, which delivers billions of dollars of food and medicine to more than 100 countries, generally enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington.
That is no longer the case: President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that while he appreciated “the concept” of USAID, the people in the agency “turned out to be radical left lunatics.” Trump signed an executive order freezing foreign aid, and the agency is expected to be reduced to about 290 workers of the more than 5,000 foreign service officers, civil servants and personal service contractors it currently employs, according to two sources familiar with the plans.
What is USAID, the foreign assistance agency Trump wants to shut down?
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Most of Musk’s more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts, many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics. As the theories spread, they are repackaged, and in many cases added upon, to further the claims.
A review of the accounts’ profiles reveals how a lengthy crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force built up in recent years in relatively fringe internet circles, only to be suddenly elevated and acted upon by Musk. The pattern is similar to one that played out with the so-called Twitter Files in 2022, when selectively framed narratives and out-of-context internal documents were weaponized to fuel allegations of a grand government censorship conspiracy. And it is one likely to continue under Trump and Musk, who have histories of trafficking in falsehoods.
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