Elon Musk said President Trump has "agreed" to "shut" the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) down.
Musk's comments early Monday followed reports that two senior USAID security officials were placed on administrative leave after denying representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which the billionaire spearheads, access to internal systems during a visit to the agency's D.C. headquarters.
While representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to Axios' requests for comment in the evening, the president told reporters earlier Sunday that USAID was "run by radical lunatics, and we're getting them out, and then we'll make a decision" on its future.
Trump has already ordered a freeze on foreign aid as part of his "America first" foreign policy. The U.S. government is the world's single largest humanitarian donor.
Musk said during a late-night discussion with former DOGE co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on his X Spaces platform he went over USAID issues in detail with Trump and checked with him a few times if he was sure that he wanted to shut it down and he agreed to do it.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also accused the agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance of being "incredibly politically partisan," without going into specific examples.
