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GOP ex-Gov. George Pataki — who set up a relief fund to help Ukrainians after the Russian invasion — said Sunday that he backs President Trump’s move to gut the “far left” international USAID agency.
Pataki, who has visited Ukraine multiple times as part of relief efforts, said he was stunned that the US Agency for International Development would not give his pro-Ukrainian charitable initiative the time of day under the Biden administration.
“This is long overdue,” Pataki, 79, said on WABC 770 AM’s the Cats Roundtable program, referring to Trump’s move to overhaul the agency.
“I’ve had some experience with USAID, and it’s been awful,” New York’s former gov said.
“They are a bunch of cronies who’ve run it in a far-left way,” Pataki said of USAID’s higher-ups. “Completely dismantle it, and start all over.”
A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing thousands of employees at USAID on paid leave Friday, halting the president’s plans to cut its workforce down to just a few hundred.
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk began the process of shuttering USAID nearly two weeks ago, when his team of Department of Government Efficiency engineers gained access to the agency’s headquarters as part of their mission to review more than $40 billion in funding programs and trim wasteful spending.
Pataki said he was outraged when he heard about some of USAID’s spending projects, including $1.5 million to support “diversity, equity and inclusion and increasing employment for “LGBT+persons,” according to USASPENDING.gov.
“What they were doing under Biden was criminal. … You have to clean house, and that’s what [Trump] is doing,” the former three-term governor said.
USAID was allocated billions of dollars to provide assistance to Ukraine.
Pataki, through his not-for-profit Pataki Leadership center, delivered more than 1,000 heaters and generators and tons of medical and hygiene supplies and helped construct mobile housing for refugees in the same war — yet said he got no cooperation with USAID.
“We’ve been there all these times delivering humanitarian aid. We’ve seen virtually nothing from USAID,” he said. “We tried to talk to them and say, `Look, we have an all-volunteer organization. We’re on the ground in Ukraine. We can deliver things efficiently. Right away.’
“They had no interest at all, because they go through their cronies — their Washington partners who they have given billions in grants to for years,” Pataki said. “Those Washington organizations have huge bureaucracies that spend the money on themselves.”
“Very little” of the money is spent on things needed in Ukraine such as generators and heaters, the ex-governor claimed.
“That’s exactly how USAID has operated. It has been an awful organization. … It’s long overdue to completely dismantle it and start all over,” Pataki said.
He said USAID’s failures symbolize the Biden’s administration’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine war.
“This war has been a catastrophe. Biden‘s leadership has been a disaster for Ukraine, dribbling out help, having the war extended now virtually three years … with massive losses to the Ukrainians,” he said.
Pataki said he is hopeful Trump will be the strong leader to forge a peace agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to end the war.
Zelensky has done a “tremendous job in rallying the Ukrainian people and the cause of the freedom of their country,” Pataki said.
But he backed new elections in Ukraine following any peace treaty.
“If a peace treaty with Russia can be signed, a fair election in Ukraine would give them a chance to say, ‘We now are at peace. Let’s rebuild our country. And let’s choose the leadership.’ It may well be Zelensky again,” Pataki said.
