“We care,” Melania Trump declared in 2018 during a visit to Egypt as first lady to promote her partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“We care, and we want to show the world that we care, and I’ve partnered and am working with USAID,” she continued. “And that’s what I want to share — that we care.”
On her four-country jaunt through Africa in 2018 — her first major solo international trip as first lady — Melania Trump offered praise for what she described as “successful” USAID programs as she observed them up close.
In Malawi, for example, she handed out bags, school supplies and soccer balls as part of her “BeBest” initiative as part of a collaboration with a USAID literacy program.
“It’s really touching,” she told ABC News in an exclusive interview during the visit. “I’m glad that I’m here to see in person what the children are going through, and [see that] they’re educating them in the right way.
Six years later, her husband, President Donald Trump, is working to dismantle the very programs his wife celebrated – and denigrating the aid agency that supported those initiatives as a “tremendous fraud.”
“For decades … USAID has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,” the White House claimed in a memo released earlier this week.
That sentiment is a far cry from Melania Trump’s own glowing characterizations of the aid agency’s work. During a visit with primary school students in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, where she promoted a USAID program that distributed more than 1.4 million textbooks to students, the first lady explained the value of American investments abroad.
“When people have opportunities and societies are freer and more educated, we are stronger as the United States,” the first lady told ABC News.
The White House and the first lady’s office both declined to comment for this story.
At another stop on her African tour, Melania Trump toured the Great Sphinx in Giza, where she observed a USAID-backed project to limit groundwater that threatened to erode hieroglyphics in the iconic Egyptian monument.
“She was well-briefed, she was personally interested, she was very impressed that we were working so closely” with local government and “to provide economic opportunities for the Egyptian people,” one former senior USAID official in the region recalled.
Now, the official who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said it’s “hard to stomach” what President Trump has done to disband the agency whose work so impressed the first lady.
“It’s very disturbing and clearly it’s all politics,” the official said. “Until you see [the work of USAID] firsthand, it’s very difficult to understand and explain. You leave a different person.”
And the first lady isn’t the only Trump who has stood behind USAID’s work.
In 2019 then-President Trump signed a memorandum launching a new “Women’s Global Development and Prosperity” Initiative aimed at empowering women in the developing world. The $50 million fund, known as W-GDP, was developed to be distributed by USAID with an ambitious goal of empowering 50 million women in developing countries by 2025.
The initiative was led by the president’s daughter and then senior adviser, Ivanka Trump.
Ivanka Trump told ABC News at the time the initiative was not only seen as an opportunity to provide economic assistance to women in the developing world, but also related to national security.
“We know there’s a correlation between gender inequality and conflict, there’s tremendous amounts of research. There’s a reason today, the president signed WGDP as a national security presidential memorandum,” she said in an interview with ABC News. “It is in our domestic security interests to empower women”
“Our goal is to empower women to help their home countries become self-reliant and to allow a lot families — millions of families throughout the world — to become self-reliant, and also in the United States, very importantly,” then-President Trump said during a ceremony to formally launch the W-GDP.
In 2018, Ivanka Trump embarked on her own visit to Africa, where she met with women cocoa farmers who received support from a $2 million USAID-funded project meant to support female entrepreneurs across the continent. At a coffee shop in Ethiopia, she announced a loan backed by USAID for a coffee business owned by women.
ABC News has requested comment from a representative for Ivanka Trump.
The second Trump administration has worked to undermine those sorts of investments. In his first days in office, President Trump has made a priority of curbing diversity-related initiatives in government, crystallized in an executive order he signed on his first day of office, taking aim at federal funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The Trump administration said this week that it would place all USAID direct-hire employees on administrative leave starting Friday, except for core leadership and “mission-critical” staff, according to an email sent to employees and a message posted on the agency’s website.
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