Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t just show up to Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing; he came loaded for bear. Ostensibly there to discuss the FY26 State Department budget, Rubio instead delivered a scathing indictment of China’s global con game and exposed shocking failures in America’s foreign aid system. What unfolded wasn’t routine testimony; it was a political thunderclap and a long-overdue reckoning.
As I’m sure you recall, Democrats have been having hissy fits over USAID cuts. They claim that the Trump administration was axing vital humanitarian aid when in reality, it was targeting waste, fraud, and abuse.
Just how bad is the waste, fraud, and abuse? Rubio revealed that under the old USAID model, only 12 cents of every dollar made it to the intended recipients. “That means that in order for us to get, you know, aid to somebody, we had to spend all this other money supporting this foreign aid industrial complex,” he said. In other words, U.S. taxpayers were funding bloated overhead while struggling nations got table scraps.
Sweeping reforms are now targeting that waste. “We’re gonna find more efficient ways to deliver aid directly,” Rubio said, laying out a strategy that puts boots-on-the-ground regional bureaus in charge and aligns foreign aid with American strategic interests.
But the most jaw-dropping part of Rubio’s testimony was his takedown of China’s so-called aid efforts. “China doesn’t do humanitarian aid. China does predatory lending. That’s what the Belt and Road Initiative is,” he said. Unlike the U.S., which sends food, medicine, and disaster relief, “they have no, zero record of doing humanitarian aid in the world… they don’t know how, and they have no interest in doing it.”
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Instead, Rubio described China’s “development assistance” as a debt trap. “They go into some country, make you a loan, and then hold that debt over your head,” he warned. “By the way, you have to hire a Chinese company to do it.” It’s colonization by contract, and countries around the globe are waking up to it.
And while critics accuse the U.S. of retreating from global leadership, Rubio scoffed at the idea. “I just hit 18 countries in 18 weeks. That doesn’t sound like much of a withdrawal,” he said, adding that he speaks with some foreign leaders more often than his own kids.
He also took a wrecking ball to the internal dysfunction at Foggy Bottom that had left the State Department lagging behind the pace of global events. “When I get a decision memo… there were 40 boxes on this piece of paper. That’s ridiculous. That takes too long.” Rubio noted that the bureaucracy had become so sluggish that “people said, ‘Don’t use State Department. They take too long.’”
His message was that the status quo had to die so that U.S. foreign policy could finally operate at what he called “the pace of relevance.” And for those worried about the motive behind the changes? Rubio dismissed that, too.
“This isn’t about dismantling foreign policy. It’s about making it smarter,” he said. “And it’s not about saving money. It’s about delivering results that make America stronger, safer, and more prosperous.”
Mind Blowing information from Marco Rubio
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 21, 2025
- Only 12 cents of every dollar spent from USAID went to recipients, the other 88 cents went to NGOs who pocketed the money
- Even with the reforms we put in place and what we're suggesting in changes to our foreign aid, we still will… pic.twitter.com/Tf5LQRNpaR
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