Kristof: Really, Secretary Rubio? I’m Lying About the Kids Dying Under Trump?

I see Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a good man doing bad things but perhaps he thinks even worse of me He in recent weeks suggested that I was a liar While testifying before Congress Rubio claimed that the Trump administration s dismantling of the U S Agency for International Expansion had not cost any lives No children are dying on my watch he asserted At another point in the hearing he broadened his comment to include adults as well No one has died because of USAID This is ludicrous The only debate is whether to measure the dead in the thousands tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands So Rep Brad Sherman D-Calif challenged Rubio citing reporting overseas by me and by Reuters of individuals who died as a impact of the shutdown of American humanitarian aid That s a lie Rubio announced False Evan s story So let me help Rubio with the truth Meet Evan Anzoo a -year-old boy who was born with HIV in South Sudan I mentioned Evan in a column in March from South Sudan This was a child as precious as yours or mine Evan s life was in our hands and for five years America kept him alive with antiretroviral medicines costing less than cents a day through the President s Exigency Plan for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR This was a initiative started by President George W Bush that has saved more than million lives so far and it turned the tide of AIDS around the world and built enormous goodwill toward the United States Then along came President Donald Trump and his freeze on the greater part humanitarian aid in January How could a -year-old orphan possibly obtain medicine on his own Evan weakened and soon died of an opportunistic infection If Rubio necessities further reminder of the human toll there was a little girl named Achol Deng who likewise died when she lost access to antiretrovirals because of the USAID freeze I share these stories of Evan and Achol because it strikes me as doubly offensive not only to cause unnecessary deaths of such children but to deny these deaths and call them lies The denials erase these children and dodge all responsibility It was Elon Musk who first insisted that no one has died Now Rubio has doubled down Rubio is smarter than this and better than this over the years he has shown himself knowledgeable about foreign affairs and has demonstrated compassion I was relieved when he became secretary of state for I want smart experienced people around Trump When I reached out to Rubio to ask about the lies comment and the suggestion that no one had died he declined to be interviewed But he seemed to back off and presented a more sensible response albeit a complete evasion America is the the majority generous nation in the world and we urge other nations to dramatically increase their humanitarian efforts a senior State Department official reported in a report It is true that the United States has donated more in total humanitarian aid than any other country although certain European nations donate several times as much per capita However by slashing aid the United States set an example that Britain and France promptly followed compounding the suffering Trump is right that USAID needed change But U S aid overall still saved about one life every seconds based on estimates by the Center for Global Growth and counting The transfer of USAID into the State Department wouldn t necessarily be a bad idea if it were done systematically But merely shuttering the agency with no transition has been catastrophic An impact counter developed by an economist estimates that about people have died so far from the reductions in U S assistance two-thirds of them children The death toll is reported to be rising at a rate of per hour Related Articles Letters Fear and anger not age separate the GOP and Democrats Letters Even with leverage would Trump use it against Putin Rep Ro Khanna local labor unions denounce federal layoffs Can Trump fix the national debt Republican senators multiple investors and even Elon Musk have doubts Trump s promises of easy wins meet reality during a rocky week I m not sure it s veritably that high partly because I ve seen specific laid-off vitality workers continue to work without pay and several strength ministries step up to pick up the slack And it takes time for children to weaken and die Yet although nobody knows the true number partly because the cancellation of programs means that no one is counting the dead the flat denial of any deaths at all is preposterous Rubio chooses not to make the argument that I believe is Trump s true position We want tax cuts disproportionately benefiting the rich so we need to cut funds in the budget from people who are so marginalized that they can t complain So Evan and Achol died To deny the reality of dying children not only insults the memory of children starving to death in Sudan and Yemen and Afghanistan it also insults the intelligence of Americans Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times columnist