MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell choked up when detailing harrowing stories of children dying as a result of the Trump administration’s welfare cuts, labeling the president and Elon Musk “soulless, mindless entities.”
Speaking on Monday’s The Last Word, O’Donnell quoted a New York Times article by columnist Nicholas Kristof which referenced Evan Anzoo, a 5-year-old boy South Sudan who had been born with HIV.
The orphan was being kept alive by antiretroviral medicines that PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, was funding to the tune of less than 12 cents per day. Launched by George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR has saved over 26 million lives. President Trump halted all U.S. foreign aid pending a review on Jan. 20. By March 10, 83 percent of USAID programs had been terminated.
ADVERTISEMENT
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress last month, “No children are dying on my watch” as a result of the Trump administration freezing the international humanitarian aid.
However, Kristof reported that after the medications were cut, Evan’s conditioned weakened and he died from an opportunistic infection.
An emotional O’Donnell disputed Rubio’s comment to Congress.
“Evan died on his watch,” O’Donnell said. “Evans of all ages are dying on Marco Rubio’s watch, and no one is counting,” he continued, choking up. “And so we don’t know as of tonight whether it’s tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Evans, but we know it will be.”
O’Donnell then turned to investigations detailed in a New York Times article headlined “Elon Musk’s Legacy is Disease, Starvation and Death,” which stated that Musk’s cuts to USAID overseas have led to an estimated 300,000 deaths, mostly children.
The TV host compared the humanitarian efforts of billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
“Bill Gates has seen starving children in Africa many, many times and has devoted his life and his billions to trying to save them,” O’Donnell said.
“Which makes Bill Gates’ verdict on the current richest person in the world so important and powerful. Bill Gates, the former richest person in the world, said, ‘the picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.’”
He continued, “And the picture of the richest person in the world carrying around his drug box of ecstasy, Adderall, psychedelic mushrooms and then taking life-saving drugs away from the poorest people in the world is a picture only Donald Trump could have created.”
“And with Elon Musk and Donald Trump, soulless, mindless entities are what you see.”
