Musk: Trump ‘agreed’ USAID should be shut down

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said early Monday that President Trump has “agreed” to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which administers billions of dollars of humanitarian, development and security assistance in more than 100 countries.

“None of this could be done without the full support of the President, you know. And with regard to the USAID stuff, I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said in an X Spaces discussion.

“And I actually checked with him a few times. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ He’s like, ‘Yes,’” Musk added. “So we’re shutting it down.”

Musk said in the discussion — which included former DOGE co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) — that there was no hope for USAID to improve and instead they would be forced to shutter the agency.

“So to be clear, in shutting down, which we’re in the process of doing, shutting down USAID, the reason for that, as opposed to simply trying to do some minor housecleaning, is that, as we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms,” Musk said in the X Spaces discussion.

“If you’ve got an apple that’s got a worm in it, maybe you can take the worm out, but if you’ve got actually just a ball of worms, it’s hopeless. And USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, you’ve just got to basically get rid of the whole thing,” Musk said.

“That is why it’s got to go,” he added. “It’s beyond repair.”

Hours later, staffers received a notice instructing them to stay out of USAID headquarters in Washington on Monday, The Associated Press reported.

Staffers told the AP that they tracked more than 600 employees locked out of the system overnight. Those still in the system received an email saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership,” the building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.”

Musk, in recent days, has been wrestling for control of the agency, which has become the latest casualty of the Trump administration’s sweeping changes to the federal government.

The Trump administration placed two senior officials on administrative leave after they refused to turn over classified materials to teams from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) commission, the AP reported Sunday.

DOGE teams eventually gained access to some of the agency’s classified information, including intelligence reports, according to the AP.

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead,” Musk wrote in a post on X early Monday morning after the X Spaces discussion.

Musk wrote earlier Sunday on X, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

Trump also criticized USAID in remarks to reporters Sunday night.

“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out,” Trump told reporters, the AP reported.

Following reports that Trump was considering merging USAID with the State Department, congressional Democrats voiced concern to State officials.

“Any attempt to reorganize or redesign USAID requires advance consultation with, and notification to, Congress,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats wrote in a letter to the department.

Updated at 8:26 a.m. EST