New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has chastised Elon Musk, accusing him of spreading misleading information, after the world’s richest man claimed no one could name even one person who had died due to foreign-aid cuts in the USAID programme.
Musk posted on his platform, X, that critics who had blamed him for the aid cuts and the death of millions had failed to produce “a single name” of anyone who had died among the “millions”.
“Not a single name,” Musk wrote, dismissing the “false claims”.
Kristof replied to the post, saying he could provide Musk with “many, many names” of people who had died due to disruptions in aid programs.
Kristof named Yamah Freeman, a 23-year-old woman who died during childbirth after Musk “stopped paying for the diesel for ambulances in her part of Liberia”; Gbessey Kiadu, a one-year-old who died of malaria.
“Ibrahim Koroma, an infant, died of AIDS in Sierra Leone after you interrupted HIV supplies. I talked to health workers who cared for him,” Kristoff wrote.
“Achol Deng was an 8-year-old girl with HIV in South Sudan who died when you cut funding for the health care worker who provided her medicines. I talked to him.”
The journalist asserted that he could cite several more cases from his reporting, adding that in several villages across South Sudan, Uganda, Liberia and Sierra Leone, he had encountered devastated families who had attributed the death of countless to disruptions in budget cuts or slashing of foreign aid.
“I challenge you: Come with me on a reporting trip, and we'll talk to these moms and dads, and you'll see the dying children themselves. I think if you see the kids whose lives are at stake, maybe you'll change your mind,” Kristof wrote.
An article in The Argument headlined ‘Elon Musk’s zero accountability life’ cited research study published in The Lancet that estimated that the dismantling of USAID could contribute to 14 million deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under the age of 5.
A month ago, former USAID official turned whistleblower Nicolas Enrich, speaking to France 24, said efficiency concerns did not drive the dismantling of USAID but "to soothe the ego of the world's richest man."
That would be Elon Musk, who was heading the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, then.
Enrich had binned US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's claim that "no one has died" from the shuttering of USAID as "flatly untrue". The whistleblower said that almost “750,000 people have already died unnecessarily due to those cuts."
What was DOGE?
DOGE was tasked with reducing US government spending and cutting jobs. Though not an official government department. Musk’s DOGE shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025, citing a thumbs-up from Trump, alleging that the agency was a “criminal organization” and that it was “time for it to die.”.