During the last administration, NPR White House reporter Asma Khalid sounded like a foot soldier for Democrats, coddling Kamala at Christmas across multiple taxpayer-funded programs (2022), and hailing a Harris trip to Germany, with zero GOP soundbites (2024).
Over the weekend Khalid appeared on PBS, NPR, and ABC hammering away at Elon Musk as "the world's richest man" taking a hatchet to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is automatically associated with the poor, so Musk will "increase starvation rates." He's a killer.
It started on the very tilted talk show Washington Week with The Atlantic:
DC press corps on @WashingtonWeek in high dudgeon over @ElonMusk and USAID. NPR’s @asmamk: “There’s something I think very strange at this moment of seeing the world’s richest man really take a hatchet that will essentially take people who are already in the depths of poverty and… pic.twitter.com/4EFVj3jOEg
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) February 8, 2025
Khalid: "There's something I think just very strange in this moment of seeing the world's richest man really sort of take a hatchet that will essentially take people who are already in the depths of poverty and, you know, increase starvation rates or increase hunger rates, which is likely what will happen if USAID is entirely cut off."
Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic doubled down: "It's a test case for can agencies just be abolished with no without Congress having any say, but it's also a test case of cruelty. You know, are Americans willing to accept a high level of cruelty and death just, you know, on the president's whim, on Elon Musk's whim?
Khalid was back on the ramparts in the "Week in Politics" chat on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday:
AYESHA RASCOE, host: On the domestic side of things, we see Elon Musk rolling through federal agencies and, in some cases, leaving them decimated. What stood out to you from last week, and what's on your radar this week?
KHALID: I think what stood out to me, Ayesha, was just the scope and speed of what is happening. You know, we've seen the administration essentially try to shut down a federal agency, USAID, get rid of thousands of employees, gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, take over the cultural arts by firing the board of the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C., and then you saw the president naming himself as the chairman. So there is so much, I would say, breaking of institutions that is occurring simultaneously.
Then came a pundit spot on ABC's This Week, where she repeated the "richest man in the world is starving people" spin.
NPR’s @asmamk on ABC’s #ThisWeek: “This is the case of the richest man in the world and there’s something very strange about him slashing programs that prevent starvation and hunger and poverty in much of the world.” She said the same thing about @ElonMusk Friday night on PBS:… pic.twitter.com/oKq3c7WHMl
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) February 9, 2025
KHALID: I was speaking with a USAID staffer this week or maybe I call them a former staffer at this point, who said to me they were emailed at 12:42 a.m., in the middle of the night, to not appear at work the next day. This isn't the process of Congress sitting there and going through to assess what budgetary perhaps limitations they ought to put on USAID.
This is the case of -- as Susan said -- the richest man in the world and there's something very strange about him slashing programs that prevent starvation and hunger and poverty in much of the world.
They're so wedded to this "starvation" point and they don't seem to care at all that Secretary of State Rubio has resumed the humanitarian aid.
