GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday the original intention was to keep the U.S. Agency for International Development running while reviewing how money was being spent. But he said the government received no cooperation and employees were acting in “contravention” and “insubordination.”
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He was speaking about the major upheaval at USAID. Almost all the agency’s workers overseas are being pulled off the job and out of the field under a sudden Trump administration order.
“It is not the direction I wanted it. It’s not the way we wanted to do it initially, but it is the way we will have to do it now,” Rubio said at a news conference with the Guatemalan president in the country’s capital.
“What would be a gift to our geopolitical rivals is billions of dollars in foreign aid that is not aligned to the national interests in the foreign policy of the United States,” Rubio said.
