In a recent podcast episode, Joe Rogan hosted Mike Benz, a former Trump administration speechwriter, who discussed America’s controversial global influence, echoing long-standing left critiques of U.S. foreign policy. Benz highlighted issues like U.S.A.I.D.’s historical involvement in the Southeast Asian heroin trade and linked it to current right-wing efforts to undermine governmental institutions. This represents a notable shift, as Trump allies are now adopting leftist criticisms to justify dismantling agencies like U.S.A.I.D. amid a broader embrace of skepticism towards foreign intervention. Critics warn that this appropriation risks reducing legitimate humanitarian efforts, with implications for U.S. domestic and foreign policy.
In his podcast studio, Joe Rogan engaged in a three-hour conversation, cigar in hand and brow knitted, while his guest elaborated on the troubling legacy of America’s influence overseas.
Familiar highlights emerged for anyone critical of American power from the left: The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (U.S.A.I.D.) role in the Southeast Asian heroin trade during the 1970s. The Central Intelligence Agency’s infiltration of leftist movements in America. “Rogue U.S.A.I.D. operations in Cuba.” And the considerable profits that American oil firms have gained from “U.S. regime change initiatives.”
However, Mr. Rogan’s guest on the Feb. 12 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” was not a leftist academic or investigative journalist. Instead, he was Mike Benz, a former speechwriter in President Trump’s first term whose work has been frequently referenced by Elon Musk as rationale behind calls to dismantle U.S.A.I.D., the 64-year-old foreign aid institution.
“The MAGA movement is contending with the legacy of Ronald Reagan,” Mr. Benz remarked, referencing the former president’s endorsement of international development.
Amid the sweeping changes early in Trump’s second presidency, this might represent the most fundamental shift: repurposing traditionally leftist critiques of American power to support right-wing goals of dismantling established governmental entities.
For years, influential voices on the left have derided American soft-power initiatives, covert actions, and military presence abroad as manifestations of a uniquely American brand of imperialism, which undermines the will of foreign citizens in favor of U.S. government interests and those of multinational corporations, while simultaneously creating perilous repercussions — unchecked presidential authority and eroded civil liberties — domestically.
Mr. Trump’s supporters have utilized this narrative, albeit with a twist. They now employ it to advocate for expanded executive power and the significant elevation of Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person.
“These leftist critiques seem to be adopted, repurposed, and weaponized by MAGA and Trump loyalists,” remarked Hugh Wilford, a historian at California State University, Long Beach and author of “The CIA: An Imperial History.”
In his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk has accused U.S.A.I.D. of “money laundering” and shared claims suggesting that the agency’s democracy-promotion efforts are merely “a C.I.A. front.” During her confirmation hearings, Tulsi Gabbard, the new director of national intelligence, condemned covert actions aimed at supplying proxies in Syria and “regime change conflicts” throughout the Middle East.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary, has attributed the war in Ukraine to the foreign policy establishment’s “strategic grand plan to dismantle any nation, including Russia, that resists American imperial ambitions.”
The Center for Renewing America, a think tank recently directed by Russ Vought, who was Mr. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget chief, has also weighed in. A report published by the group this month accused the National Endowment for Democracy — a government-funded entity established during the Reagan era to bolster democracy and civil society abroad — of serving as a “tool for neoconservative nation-building.”
This trend is not without historical precedent in Mr. Trump’s politics, as he has resurrected a dormant vein of Republican doubt regarding foreign interventions. In 2016, Mr. Trump criticized the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as a candidate and contemplated merging U.S.A.I.D. into the State Department during his initial presidency. He also lashed out at the nation’s intelligence agencies and the F.B.I. after becoming the focus of an investigation into his campaign’s links with Russian officials.
Yet, Mr. Trump’s second term has taken this further, embracing specific narratives casting humanitarian aid and covert actions in a dubious light — narratives long associated with the left, even while his advisers denounce the same initiatives as strongholds of “far left activists.”
Mr. Trump has compelled the left into an uncomfortable role of defending the institutions and policies it once criticized.
“It’s a bizarre fun-house mirror moment,” observed Daniel Immerwahr, a historian specializing in U.S. foreign policy at Northwestern University.
Mr. Benz, who is scheduled to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, exemplifies this phenomenon clearly. Once a corporate attorney and anonymous far-right social media figure, he has emerged as an influential voice for Mr. Musk.
Mr. Musk has reacted to Mr. Benz’s posts nearly 300 times on X and has referenced him in nearly half of his mentions of U.S.A.I.D., blaming the agency for censorship in Europe and criticizing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political endeavors, among other issues. Mr. Benz did not respond to a request for comment regarding this article.
In podcasts and posts on X that have garnered him close to a million followers, Mr. Benz posits that present-day attempts to address online misinformation can trace their origins back to a Cold War-era legacy of intelligence agencies utilizing ostensibly benign development programs as chess pieces in their battle against Soviet influence globally.
The most blatant of such activities were curtailed following a series of exposés concerning intelligence agency misconduct starting in the late 1960s, resulting in significant reforms within the Central Intelligence Agency and other bodies in the 1970s. The 1980s witnessed more transparent soft-power projects under organizations like U.S.A.I.D. and government-funded groups like the National Endowment for Democracy.
These initiatives, widely embraced by anti-communist factions from both Republican and Democratic circles, were often met with skepticism from the left — and are now receiving similar treatment from Mr. Benz and Mr. Musk.
They contend that U.S. government influence campaigns, which historically undermined leftist populism in other nations, have been appropriated by liberals post-Cold War and are now wielded against rightist populism at home and abroad. They cite funding for independent media and civil society initiatives in Europe that criticize right-wing administrations and back misinformation-countering campaigns often targeting conservative social media activities.
“USAID is/was a radical-left political psy op,” Mr. Musk asserted in a Feb. 3 post on X, referencing Mr. Benz.
To support this position, Mr. Benz has drawn upon the longstanding research of leftist journalists and scholars, such as historian Alfred McCoy, whose findings on the C.I.A. and U.S.A.I.D.’s involvement in heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia incited the wrath of the C.I.A. in the early 1970s.
Furthermore, some claims made by Trump’s allies echo those of President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Russian-distributed media. After popular uprisings against Kremlin-aligned governments in Ukraine during 2004 and 2014, which garnered support from the Bush and Obama administrations and American NGOs, the Kremlin characterized that backing as a “coup” and a continuation of U.S. Cold War strategies. Both Mr. Benz and the Center for Renewing America have reiterated this assertion.
Mr. Vought’s think tank has labeled the National Endowment for Democracy as “the tip of the proverbial spear for intensified C.I.A. and State Department efforts to incite political revolution in Ukraine.” In a December conversation with Mr. Rogan, Mr. Benz claimed that “the U.S. effectively executed a Jan. 6 against the Yanukovich government in Ukraine” in 2014, citing its funding activities aimed at independent media organizations within the country.
Mr. McCoy, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was unfamiliar with Mr. Benz’s work but noted a modest increase in sales of his book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power,” since Mr. Benz cited him earlier this month.
Having been shot at by U.S.-sponsored guerrillas while investigating U.S.A.I.D. in Laos in 1971, Mr. McCoy expressed concerns about applying his past research to the agency’s current context. He concluded that in the post-Cold War era, “I would venture that U.S.A.I.D. has been as effective, if not more so, than any other organizations out there,” and that defunding it would be “catastrophic for the communities it impacts.”
“It’s quite appalling, honestly,” he commented.