Melania and Ivanka Trump
used thousands of dollars from USAID to fund pet projects during
Trump's first term it's been revealed as the agency's spending comes
under scrutiny from the president.
The president has gone
scorched-earth against the USAID this week, berating its use of
tax-payer dollars and saying it had to be 'corrupt' in its spending.
But
despite Donald's disdain for the aid agency, it has maintained close
ties with his wife and daughter for years by investing in their
government ventures.
USAID helped fund Melania Trump's Be Best program and Ivanka Trump's Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative during the first Trump term.
And
each woman traveled with the agency on separate trips to Africa, where
they praised the investments it was making on the continent.
Ivanka
Trump travelled with then-USAID administrator Mark Green to Africa in
April 2019, where they met with women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and rural cocoa farmers on the Ivory Coast.
USAID
oversaw $265 million per year in spending Ivanka Trump's women's
business initiative and an associated antipoverty program.
Melania Trump partnered with the agency on her 2018 trip to Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.
In
Malawi, the first lady promoted USAID's national reading program, which
was donating on Trump's behalf 1.4 million textbooks to the more than
5,600 primary schools in the poverty-stricken nation.
'I am so
proud of the work this administration is doing through USAID and
others,' the first lady said at the time, 'and look forward to the
opportunity to take the message of my Be Best campaign to many of the
countries, and children, throughout Africa.'
In
his first term, Trump heavily cut funding for the aid agency but it
still found money to invest into his family's government ventures.
Ivanka
Trump used USAID for her program to promote women in business, claiming
12 million women around the world had been helped by it.
She travelled with the agency to Colombia in September 2019 to run a workshop for women entrepreneurs.
That
same year, she also used over $11,000 from the agency to buy video
recording and reproducing equipment for a White House event, its records
show.
Meanwhile, USAID was one of the first agencies to name an ambassador to Melania Trump's Be Best initiative.
When
Melania Trump first announced her signature program in May 2018, she
asked government agencies to name a liaison to her group. USAID
immediately did so.
At her one-year anniversary celebration in
May, Melania acknowledged the agency and thanked it for naming the first
Be Best ambassador.
'For the first time in history, the United
States Agency for International Development has appointed a Be Best
ambassador,' she said.
'On this one year anniversary of my
initiative, I call on all of our partner agencies to appoint a be best
ambassador who will serve as a liaison between my office and their
respective agency to better highlight and promote the programs and
services offered to parents and children on behalf of the US
government,' she added.
Donald Trump was sitting in the audience listening.
Neither the East Wing, the West Wing, nor Ivanka Trump's office responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment.
USAID delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid overseas.
The
Trump administration is threatening to shut it down or bring the
independent agency under the umbrella of the State Department.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now acting director of the agency it's been announced this week.
Hundreds
of USAID contractors were placed on unpaid leave and some were
terminated. Elon Musk, who is running Trump's Department of Government
Efficiency or DOGE program, said the agency would be eliminated.
Its Washington D.C. office is closed and employees were either put on leave or told to work from home.
Trump has said of the agency: 'It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.'
He also claims it 'had to be corrupt' to approve certain initiatives.
The
president has berated the agency for its spending practices, including
having a subscription to Politico Pro, a service that tracks legislation
and other government news.
And his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, gave a blistering account of USAID's
spending. Speaking to reporters at the White House last week, she held
up a sheet of paper giving details of the astonishing ways in which
taxpayers' money had been doled out.
It was an apparent reference to a story in Daily Mail,
which first outlined the shocking expenditures related to diversity,
equity and inclusion (DEI), on which President Trump has ordered a
crackdown.
'I don't know about you. But as an American taxpayer, I
don't want my dollars going toward this crap. And I know the American
people don't either. And that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked
by President Trump to do. To get the fraud, waste and abuse out of the
federal government,' Leavitt said.
