USAID: The Foreign Aid Racket Funds RINO Grifters, Not Just Democrats

Republican foreign aid grifters have come out swinging in defense of their cushy careers.

Crew removes signage from the USAID headquarters building, which President Trump immediately turned over to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

by Joseph P. Duggan
February 18, 2025

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size,” said Ronald Reagan. “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”

Donald Trump and Elon Musk today are trying to prove Reagan’s adage wrong. They are moving to dismantle and defund the foreign aid bureaucracy of the U.S. Agency for International Development and its many contractors and grant recipients.

USAID’s Shutdown: Trump and Musk’s Nuclear Strike on the Deep State

Lasting success for this mission requires more than eliminating spending and jobs within USAID and its Beltway Bandit “implementing partners.” It also calls for defunding federal and state government support for sinecures held by former USAID bosses and their hangers-on — including many Republicans-in-name-only.

(RELATED: Trump Should Shutter USAID — Development Economics Is a Hotbed for Corruption)

Besides the profits and jobs given to aid contractors, there is a large network providing foreign aid grifters with cushy think-tank posts, light-duty academic positions, and appointments to government boards — in other words, the sort of handsomely compensated dolce far niente gigs made infamous by Cambridge University’s Russia hoax “Walrus,” Stefan Halper.

Money is fungible. Institutions that receive any federal or state taxpayer funding should not provide sinecures to foreign aid establishment figures, either Democrats or RINOs.

As examples, here are a few profiles of senior USAID presidential appointees in past Republican administrations who have dwelt on Easy Street for long careers, most of them never having worked a day in a for-profit private enterprise.

Andrew Natsios

Making the rounds of every establishment media outlet these days from Politico to the Atlantic and all of the mainstream TV networks is Andrew Natsios, a pompous, liberal Republican of the variety that only Massachusetts can spawn. He was the head of the sprawling USAID bureaucracy two decades ago as an appointee of George Bush the Younger.

An eternally angry individual, Natsios is telling everyone whose attention he can get — without evidence — that Elon Musk’s criticisms of USAID are “bold-faced lies,” and that the actions by President Trump and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to halt foreign aid programs and spending are “illegal” and “criminal.”

Former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios on “Face the Nation”

Indignantly, Natsios insists that U.S. taxpayers did not give condoms to the Taliban. They were given, he says, not to the Taliban but to health clinics. (Never mind that the health clinics, like everything else in Afghanistan, are controlled by the Taliban and that Taliban terrorists would have first dibs on obtaining Uncle Sam’s prophylactics as well as the military equipment Joe Biden left for them.)

(RELATED: Biden’s Afghanistan Disinformation)

Natsios is a formidable know-it-all, but how even he would know intimate details of the sexual hygiene of murderous jihadi extremists and the end-user destination of rubbers “from the American people” is anyone’s guess. At any rate, he considers his point in defense of USAID’s tumescent spending a critical distinction.

Natsios asserts that USAID is vital to American security and harmonious international relations. He attempts to invest himself with authority by describing himself as “the most conservative administrator in the history of the agency.”

Sadly that might actually be true; but it’s rather like Ilhan Omar claiming to be the most conservative member of the Squad. Would it make any difference if that were true? Whoever happens to be the most conservative member of the Squad is, as everyone knows, a far-left radical lunatic.

The conservative position, recognizing that the agency was never reformable, has always been for the abolition of USAID. There has never been a USAID administrator whose outlook and policies were even remotely conservative. Natsios and all the rest of them have fully supported the insanely left-wing, corrupt, unaccountable activities of the foreign aid bureaucracy and its vast ecosystem of parasitic government contractors and NGOs.

Some of the fresh-faced journos interviewing Natsios today were still in red diapers when the imperious Massachusetts pol last had his 15 minutes of fame. That was in April 2003, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq. Interviewed by Ted Koppel on ABC’s “Nightline,” Natsios insisted that U.S. taxpayers would never pay more than $1.75 billion to reconstruct Iraq. The actual outlays by American taxpayers for that futile “nation-building” exercise have been at least 100 times greater than Natsios’s number.

George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay, one of the few true conservatives in his administration, estimated that the total costs of the Iraq war — including postwar reconstruction — would be $200 billion. This angered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had put the figure at $50 billion. Lindsey was fired. Both Lindsey and Rumsfeld had been wrong: The actual costs of the Iraq war to U.S. taxpayers are estimated between $2 trillion and $6 trillion.

The president, infuriated by Natsios’s absurd underestimation of reconstruction costs, reportedly wanted to fire him, but the blowhard Bostonian’s job was spared by White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, a lifelong crony of Natsios. Card had been responsible for giving Natsios the job in the first place.

Natsios’s CV contains no mention of him ever having held a job in the private, for-profit sector. He was a Massachusetts state legislator and later held patronage jobs from liberal Republican governor Paul Cellucci — another lifelong crony — as head of the state turnpike authority and as the state government’s secretary of administration and finance.

The elder George Bush, whose deputy chief of staff was Andy Card, gave Natsios a job as an assistant administrator of USAID from 1989 to 1993. Following that, Natsios was CEO of a major USAID contractor.

After having held the top job at USAID, he has had sinecures at Georgetown University, several Beltway think tanks, and, most recently, the George H.W. Bush School of Government at Texas A&M. He was hired for his current post by Andy Card, who was at the time the dean of the Bush School. Are federal or Texas state taxpayers paying anything to support the Bush School?

Natsios was an original NeverTrumper, signing the March 2, 2016 letter asserting “As committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head. We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.”

It is a good thing that Natsios has stormed his way into the spotlight at this time. It is a reminder of a sizable class of liberal RINO parasites, of whom Natsios is but one, who have made lucrative, lifelong careers from the foreign aid scam.

Kate Almquist

Kate Almquist’s first job after undergraduate school was to work under Natsios at the big USAID contractor known as World Vision. She followed him to the Massachusetts State Department of Finance and Administration, where Natsios appointed her at the precocious age of 27 as chief of staff — a post that Natsios also gave her a year later when both moved to the turnpike authority.

In 2001, Natsios appointed Almquist, at the age of 29, as his top aide and gatekeeper at USAID, with its thousands of employees and multibillion-dollar budget. Natsios and Almquist created an extremely toxic work environment. The two of them bullied the staff, she as a screamer and he as an arrogant, intimidating legend in his own mind, ever ready to drop Andy Card’s name whenever his ideas or demands were questioned.

She traveled everywhere around the world with him. She wore tailored, form-fitting, designer clothing that no one could have afforded on her government salary. Everyone of all political stripes at USAID noticed these inappropriate “optics,” and no one dared to say anything about it because Natsios enjoyed special protection at the White House.

Natsios arranged for Bush in 2006 to give Almquist a presidential appointment as assistant USAID administrator in charge of the Africa bureau. Following the end of the Bush administration in 2009, Almquist held several think tank sinecures. In 2014, the Obama–Biden administration hired her for a long-term position in the U.S. Defense Department, as director of something called the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

James Kunder

Natsios chose as his number two at USAID James Kunder, a liberal who had worked for many years as a career bureaucrat at USAID. Natsios depended heavily upon Kunder, who had been Natsios’s deputy during his 1989-1993 stint as an assistant USAID administrator. Conservative Republican senators led by the late Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma stalled Kunder’s confirmation for a long time, but eventually Natsios got his man. Kunder’s biography details his career as a foreign aid industry grifter.

In 2020, Kunder signed the letter of “Former Republican National Security Officials for Biden.” In 2024, Kunder signed the letter of “Republican” national security professionals endorsing Kamala Harris for president.

Patrick Cronin

For the number three position at USAID — head of policy and program coordination — Natsios installed a Deep State operative who was strangely lacking in knowledge and experience in economics or the politics of less-developed countries. He had no discernible connection to the Republican party.

This was Patrick Cronin, a former naval intelligence officer specializing in the military affairs of China and Korea — countries in which USAID had no programs or personnel. His entire career has been in government or institutions linked to the military-industrial complex. Like Kunder, Cronin signed the letters of “Republicans” endorsing Biden and Harris.

Mark Green

The first Trump administration made the mistake of naming Mark Green as head of USAID. Green, a former lawyer, was a Republican congressman from Wisconsin who had been ambassador to Tanzania under George Bush the Younger. Green fit into the neoconservative mold of Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Elliott Abrams, and John Bolton.

When he left office in 2020, the Left praised Green for his insubordination to the Trump White House. Devex, an online publication funded in part by USAID and several United Nations agencies, lauded Green as one who had “held the line at USAID.”A few days after Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Green was given the no-heavy-lifting job of CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, which receives 30 percent of its funding from federal taxpayers.

With “Republicans” like Natsios, Almquist, Kunder, Cronin, Green — and hundreds more grifters of their kind — who needs Democrats?

The foreign aid racket might yet attain eternal life unless the vast network of “scholarly” sinecures is deprived of financial support.

— Joseph P. Duggan served in the Reagan and Bush Administrations. This essay originally appeared in The American Spectator.

---

USAID’s Shutdown: Trump and Musk’s Nuclear Strike on the Deep State

Judicial Despotism: How to End Nationwide Injunction Abuse

Deep Dive: What Peace in Ukraine Will Take, and Why

---