America Paid To Torch Emergency Aid

Summary

Bulwark Takes: America Paid To Torch Emergency Aid – Episode Summary

Release Date: July 17, 2025

In the episode titled "America Paid To Torch Emergency Aid," hosted by Tim Miller from The Bulwark, the discussion delves into a troubling incident where the Trump administration reportedly approved the destruction of 500 tons of emergency food. This summary captures the key points, discussions, insights, and conclusions presented throughout the episode, providing a comprehensive overview for listeners who may not have tuned in.

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1. Introduction to the Crisis

The episode opens with Tim Miller introducing Hannah Kiras, an Atlantic writer, to discuss her investigative report on the destruction of emergency food supplies. Miller sets the stage by highlighting the severity of the situation:

Tim Miller [00:00]: "The Trump administration is about to incinerate 500 tons of emergency food."

Kiras responds by detailing the current status of the food supplies and the financial implications:

Hannah Kiras [00:26]: "The US had agreed to pay over $100,000 to incinerate this food... we've now reached the point where the food... will either be turned into animal feed or incinerated."

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2. Origins and Purpose of the Emergency Food

Kiras explains the nature and intended use of the food aid, emphasizing its critical role in humanitarian efforts:

Hannah Kiras [01:13]: "This is a specialized nutritional product called High Energy Biscuit... meant to go to children in Afghanistan and Pakistan... it's enough to feed 1.5 million children for a week."

She distinguishes between different types of nutritional products, highlighting the importance of both High Energy Biscuits and Plumpy Nut in combating child malnutrition:

Hannah Kiras [02:45]: "Plumpy Nut... a nutritional paste... helps severely malnourished children recover over six to eight weeks."

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3. Decision to Incinerate: Financial and Logistical Breakdown

The conversation shifts to the financial costs associated with destroying the food:

Tim Miller [00:53]: "So, we paid about $800,000... and now we're paying another $100,000 to get rid of it."

Kiras elaborates on the logistical challenges faced by the administration:

Hannah Kiras [05:14]: "It's a mix of both malice and incompetence... the administration struggled logistically."

She highlights the failure to reroute the food to other regions, such as Sudan or Somalia, which were closer to the storage location in Dubai:

Hannah Kiras [05:14]: "USAID proposed rerouting it, but the administration seemed to struggle logistically."

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4. Impact on Beneficiaries and the Humanitarian Gap

The episode underscores the dire consequences of this decision on children who rely on this aid:

Hannah Kiras [04:12]: "The clinics in Malawi are now running out of essential nutritional products within a week, causing families to queue from early morning hours."

Kiras discusses the broader humanitarian impact, noting that the number of child deaths due to malnutrition is projected to rise for the first time in years:

Hannah Kiras [07:25]: "Since 2000, the number of children dying before kindergarten has been halved, but this year it's projected to increase."

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5. Administrative Accountability and Response

The dialogue touches upon the accountability of government officials, particularly Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

Tim Miller [04:12]: "Secretary Rubio assured that no food would go to waste, yet the order to destroy had already been issued."

Kiras provides insight into the internal dynamics of the administration, suggesting a lack of prioritization and possible negligence:

Hannah Kiras [05:14]: "Staff within USAID sensed that sending food to Afghanistan and Pakistan was a political non-starter."

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6. Attempts to Mitigate the Crisis by Private Entities

The discussion explores the role of private philanthropy in addressing the resulting gap in emergency aid:

Hannah Kiras [07:25]: "The Gates Foundation is trying to fill the gap but acknowledges they can't match the effectiveness of national government efforts."

She emphasizes the limitations of private efforts in comparison to the comprehensive capabilities of a national government in eradicating starvation.

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7. Broader Implications and Future Outlook

Kiras raises concerns about the potential for further deterioration of humanitarian aid logistics under the current administration:

Hannah Kiras [09:13]: "This might be the first of much more food that's incinerated... no new orders for specialized nutritional products have been placed."

The episode concludes on a somber note, reflecting on the symbolic loss represented by the branded American aid:

Hannah Kiras [08:39]: "All of this food was branded already... 500 tons of food from us to no one."

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8. Closing Thoughts

Tim Miller expresses hope for internal efforts within the State Department to address the crisis, drawing parallels to past administrations where bureaucrats worked against unfavorable policies:

Tim Miller [10:08]: "Hope that there's some of that happening inside the State Department now... But it's a challenge when the folks at the top just don't care."

He wraps up by commending Hannah Kiras for her reporting and directing listeners to her article in The Atlantic.

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Conclusion

The episode of Bulwark Takes meticulously examines the mismanagement and logistical failures that led to the destruction of critical emergency food supplies intended for vulnerable populations. Through insightful reporting and poignant discussions, it highlights the far-reaching consequences of administrative negligence, the inadequacy of private philanthropy in addressing such large-scale humanitarian needs, and the pressing need for accountability and effective action to prevent future tragedies.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. I'm pulling in yet another Atlantic writer. This is the unofficial YouTube of the Atlantic. Hannah Kiras, who wrote a recent story that is just going to enrage you. The headline was, the Trump administration is about to incinerate 500 tons of emergency food. And I guess in the meantime, since. Since you're at it, it seems like that's basically happened, huh? Why don't you tell people the story?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So while the food, the 500 tons, has all. It's. It's expired at this point, it's past its shelf life. And where my reporting left off, my sources told me that the US had agreed to pay over $100,000 to incinerate this food. But whether it's actually been. It's. It's. They told me that it was on its way to the incinerator, but that's efficiency right there.

[A]

Hey, so. So we paid. What was it? What'd you say, about $800,000?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And now we're paying another 100,000 to get rid of it. That's Doge in action. So, anyway, tell us, just walk you through the origins of this. We're talking specifically about these biscuits, I guess, and what it is and kind of how this sort of saga came to be.

[B]

Yeah. So the food, it's about enough to feed 1.5 million children for a week, is what the nutritionists that I spoke to told me. And it's called. It's. It's a specialized nutritional product called High Energy Biscuit. And basically, this is the food that will save your life in a disaster or, you know, what the World Food Program said, or it functions in places where you don't have clean water, you know, you don't have a refrigerator. If there's a natural disaster that's happened or if a war has broken out, this is. You hand this packet to someone and it contains all the nutrients that a child under the age of five needs. So these biscuits were meant to go to children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were in a warehouse in Dubai. They, at, towards the end of the Biden administration, they arrived in that warehouse and they were meant to be shipped out in January. And then the Trump administration didn't do that. Some of the sources that I spoke to said that they were giving weekly reminders, you know, hey, this food is going to spoil. We won't be able to ship it. It'll either be turned into animal feed or incinerated. And we've now reached the point where the food is passed, where the UAE will even turn it into animal feed.

[A]

And is this the, is this the food that is this produced here? So like the actual product.

[B]

So here being America, I believe not. So there, there, there's high energy biscuits are one thing and then there's another product called Plumpy Nut. And that's right, that's, that's a nutritional paste. It sort of looks like a packet of salad dressing. And if you give a kid that's severely malnourished that for about six to eight weeks, they go from being on the brink of death to, you know, being playful, responsive again. And so for the story, I also spoke to the two CEOs that make that product, product in America, and they said that they have about 500,000 boxes of that product that the US has also already paid for, but seems confused about how to ship. And so, I mean, I spoke with someone today that is in Malawi who runs clinics there. And he said that typically maybe two thirds of the way into the month they would start to run low on that product. But now they run out one week into the month. And you know, at the clinics that he's, he's, he's working at, families start showing up at 7am the clinic opens at 9am so there's a real run on this because, you know, moms are showing up with, with their children and they know that, you know, their kid might need it for eight weeks, but it'll, and they're supposed to come back, they get, you know, this product in two week shipments, but after week one, there's just no more.

[A]

That was just heartbreaking there just, you know, sometimes I was talking with Ben Wittes earlier about, you know, some of the various DOJ and FBI scandals. And you know, he used the old saw about how, you know, sometimes you don't want to attribute malice when just like incompetence is actually what is happening. This seems to be a case where it's both, right? I mean, like, if you look at the Marco Rubio example, in particular the Secretary of State, it was a couple months ago that Rubio was testifying on the Hill and was asked kind of about whether this food aid was going to, you know, reach its intended recipients. The food aid we'd already paid for. And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it will. And you know, so that at that point there's plenty of time to figure it out. As you mentioned, you know, there had been people warning that the State Department about this, you know, going back to the beginning of the administration and it just like, I guess it just seems like these guys just don't care. Like they just didn't care to deal with it. It wasn't as if this was overlooked. Right.

[B]

One thing that I checked with my sources about is at the point during that May congressional hearing where Rubio said, you know, I, he said that he would ensure that no food, want to waste. The order to destroy this food had already gone out. But I, I think that it's sort of a mix of both. One of, yeah, one of the sources that I spoke to said that, you know, the food was meant for Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the staff within USAID got the sense that that was a complete political non starter, so that the administration just would not send, send food to, to children there. And then they said that they, you know, proposed rerouting it. Maybe it could go to Sudan. You know, Somalia is very close to where this food was in Dubai. And that the administration seemed to struggle logistically basically at this point. So, so it's, it's unclear whether, you know, USAID had a staff of about 13,000 and a lot of those people were supply chain experts with decades of experience. You know, and getting food into a war zone can sort of be like, you know, it's like rolling a strike, you know, but, you know, while, while everything's on fire. So it's unclear whether the State Department now has the logistical capacity to get this stuff where it needs to go.

[A]

You know, when you talk to folks like, you know, you mentioned you Talked to the CEOs of the pumpy Nut and obviously you're talking to sources for the story who are aware and what do people say about how like this gap is going to be filled and America just played such an important role, both with funding but also logistics. And if the Trump administration has just decided we're no longer going to be in the business of helping the world's poor and, you know, kids throughout the world. I mean, I did another video on how they've cut the funding to unicef. Like completely random. That isn't finished yet. That's happening as we're kind of talking. Those votes are going through Congress. But if we just completely abdicate our role, there's. Can it be filled? Like, are other people trying to, gonna be able to step up? I mean, what, what are you kind of hearing from people in that world?

[B]

I mean, so the Gates foundation is planning on spending its money down trying to fill this gap, but they have said that they can't, they can't do it. You know, and I think it really, it's very hard. Private philanthropy just can't do what the, the might of a national government deciding that it wants to eradicate starvation can. And so, you know, since, since 2000, the number of children that die before they reach kindergarten has been halved. And this coming year is the first year where experts project that that number will increase rather than decrease. And, you know, I think that it's not as if, I think that people are trying to be very creative. A lot of been tracking what different national governments in, you know, in Africa and in Southeast Asia are planning on doing. And, but, but it seems like what's happening now is sort of a triage of Life where these NGOs and these national governments are like, okay, well, the rug was pulled up from under us. What, you know, who can we save and where are we really going to prioritize?

[A]

Devastating. Well, is there, is there anything else that jumped out to you in your reporting? Any interesting anecdotes or anything I didn't, didn't ask you about that's worth sharing?

[B]

I guess two things. One thing that struck me is that all of this food was branded already. And what that means is that on, on the, on these packets of biscuits, it says underneath an American flag, you know, this product is a gift from the American people. And, you know, it's now it's, you know, 500 tons of food from us to no one.

[A]

And I think so dark, the fact.

[B]

That it was branded already. I mean, it's just, I, I, yeah, I think that it's hard to think.

[A]

About, like Santa Claus lighting the North Pole on fire, saying, how do you like that, kids?

[B]

And I think that another thing that I think it's important to emphasize is that this is, in one sense, this is a lot of food. So, you know, it's enough to feed all of the kids that are facing acute food insecurity in, in Gaza for, for a week. Right. But in the grand scheme of food that's at risk of spoiling, this is very tiny. So there are 66,000 tons of food as of earlier this summer that were stuck in different US Warehouses abroad. And, you know, the State Department, I'm really rooting for them, but it's possible that this is the first of much more food that's incinerated. So I think that keeping this in the context of what's happening next, and also, you know, the admin hasn't placed new orders for food as well, any of these specialized nutritional products. So incinerating food is tough, but it's unclear if it ends here.

[A]

That is devastating. Yeah. I mean, there were these stories that would come out after the first Trump administration. It's kind of like I'm blanking on the exact guy's name, what he's doing. But there are these bureaucrats inside the administration who were there who had not been political appointees while they were trying to tear things down to studs. They were in there doing work, trying to save stuff and keep it working. And so you gotta hope that there's some of that happening inside the State Department now. But it's a challenge when the folks at the top just don't dgif, you know. Anyway, Hana Quiros, thank you so much for your reporting. Let's stay in touch. Everybody go check out her article in the Atlantic. And, you know, we're big Atlantic fanboys over here, so we appreciate it and we'll talk to you soon.