In his executive order freezing foreign aid, Trump had decreed that lifesaving programs should be spared. Instead, they were shuttered. “When Elon said, ‘We’re doing this,’ he was already into it,” said Wiles. “And that’s probably because he knew it would be horrifying to others. But he decided that it was a better approach to shut it down, fire everybody, shut them out, and then go rebuild. Not the way I would do it.”
Wiles says she called Musk on the carpet. “You can’t just lock people out of their offices,” she recalls telling him. At first, Wiles didn’t grasp the effect that slashing USAID programs would have on humanitarian aid. “I didn’t know a lot about the extent of their grant making.” But with immunizations halted in Africa, lives would be lost. Soon she was getting frantic calls from relief agency heads and former government officials with a dire message: Thousands of lives were in the balance.
Wiles continued: “So Marco is on his way to Panama. We call him and say, ‘You’re Senate-confirmed. You’re going to have to be the custodian, essentially, of [USAID].’ ‘Okay,’ he says.” But Musk forged ahead—all throttle, no brake. “Elon’s attitude is you have to get it done fast. If you’re an incrementalist, you just won’t get your rocket to the moon,” Wiles said. “And so with that attitude, you’re going to break some china. But no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody.”
Tesla engaged in deceptive marketing for Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, judge rules