Trump Officials Believed USAID 'Just Did Abortions' Before Dismantling Agency, Book Reveals
Global health experts were forced to create "Barney-style" presentations and maps inspired by blockbuster movies to justify their critical work in combating infectious diseases worldwide, according to explosive new claims. The revelations come from a whistleblower account detailing the Trump administration's aggressive closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Shocking Ignorance in the Conference Room
When President Donald Trump returned to power in January 2025, he unleashed Elon Musk's quasi-governmental organization DOGE on USAID, targeting the agency as part of his mission to eliminate federal spending. Musk had previously labeled USAID a "criminal organization" and a "radical-left political psy op," while influential podcaster Joe Rogan called it a "money-laundering operation" with "no oversight, no receipts."
According to Nicholas Enrich's new book Into the Wood Chipper, this ignorance extended to the highest levels of the Trump administration. Enrich, who served as USAID's acting assistant administrator for global health, describes a shocking meeting on February 5, 2025, at the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters.
The meeting began with newly-installed Trump official Joe Borkert immediately informing Enrich and two colleagues: "In full transparency, we're drawing down USAID." When Enrich attempted to explain the agency's mission-critical functions, he was interrupted and told to "just stick to the lifesaving stuff."
"I Had No Idea You Did All This"
Enrich proceeded to outline USAID's vital work in tackling emerging pandemics, diagnosing and treating tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV, while immunizing millions of children against deadly diseases. His explanation was met with stunned silence before Borkert remarked: "I had no idea you did all this. As a Republican, when I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions."
Enrich writes that he didn't know whether to laugh or cry at finding leadership so "unapologetically ignorant" about an agency that had been involved in global humanitarian aid and deadly disease initiatives since 1961.
Movie-Inspired Explanations and Arbitrary Priorities
The absurdity continued when another Trump team member suggested Enrich's explanation of drug-resistant tuberculosis was too complex. The official proposed a "Barney-style" set of slides, referencing the popular children's dinosaur character, and recommended calling the disease "Super TB" for easier comprehension.
He later asked if they could create maps like those in the 1995 blockbuster movie Outbreak, showing red spreading over time as diseases advance. "You know, like the zombie apocalypse?" he reportedly asked.
When Enrich managed to emphasize the importance of USAID's malaria response effort—which had just been shut down by DOGE at the cost of thousands of jobs—even Borkert expressed frustration, exclaiming: "See, this is why, just because it might work at Twitter does not mean you can do it here!"
Nevertheless, Borkert reiterated the administration's hardline stance: "You're going to have to cut things, it's going to have to be draconian. You're only going to get things that are priority number one; that is all we're going to be able to do."
When a colleague mentioned lifesaving interventions for mothers to prevent pregnancy-related deaths, she was arbitrarily told that work would only be considered a second-tier priority.
Impostors in Big Chairs
After leaving the meeting, Enrich and his colleagues were shocked and dismayed. They felt the officials chosen to make crucial decisions with real-world ramifications "were not real policymakers, but impostors, sitting in big chairs and pretending to grapple with complex issues that required teams of experts, who they had just off-loaded."
"They're asking us to dig our own grave," one of Enrich's colleagues observed bitterly, capturing the profound disillusionment among career professionals witnessing the dismantling of decades of global health infrastructure based on fundamental misunderstandings.
