Elon Musk brands Bono a 'liar' and an 'idiot' over USAID cuts criticism
First, Donald Trump lashed out at one music icon... Now, Elon Musk is following suit and making his own rock star enemy.
Bono was on the Joe Rogan podcast on Friday (30 May) to talk about the release of his documentary Bono: Stories Of Surrender.
During the three-hour conversation, the U2 frontman took the opportunity to critise the Trump administration and singled out Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which oversaw the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Bono, who has been a campaigner for humanitarian aid for decades, criticised the cuts to international aid and cited a Boston University study that estimated that the cuts will cause more than 300,000 deaths around the world.
'There's food rotting in boats, in warehouses – 50,000 tons of it,' Bono said. 'The people who knew the codes, who were responsible for distributing that aid, were fired. That's not America, is it?'
Unsurprisingly, considering Rogan voted for Trump, his audience were quick to react – and not in a happy way.
One wrote: 'That guy's about as evil as they come Joe', while others stated they would be skipping the episode altogether and that it would be 'the first time I look forward to commercials'.
Then came Elon Musk's reaction, who took to X to say brand the singer 'such a liar/idiot', before adding that 'zero people have died' as a result of the USAID cuts.
In a later exchange, he said: 'South Park lampooned Bono as the biggest shit in the world. They were right.'
Musk stepped down from his wildly unpopular role at DOGE last week after serving the maximum 130-day term as a special government employee without Senate confirmation.
During his time at DOGE, hundreds of thousands of people participated in the "Hands Off" protests across all 50 states of the US to express their opposition to the policies of the Trump administration and cuts made by Musk's DOGE.
"Hands Off" event organizers said: "They're taking everything they can get their hands on — our healthcare, our data, our jobs, our services — and daring the world to stop them. This is a crisis, and the time to act is now."
Check out some of the best signs seen during these nation-wide protests.
Bono: Stories Of Surrender is a hybrid of concert movie and visual memoir, featuring spoken word passages from the singer's 2022 autobiography, 'Surrender.' It is streaming on Apple TV+ now.
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