CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Nicholas Kristof’s Eyewitness Laments Skip the Obvious Conclusion

Image by René DeAnda.

A skeptical friend reading the New York Times asked me why columnist Nicholas Kristof keeps writing columns about recurring poverty in less developed countries. My answer is simple. Because he keeps going to these remote areas populated by brutalized human beings living in dire impoverishment and sickness. At no small risk to himself (Kristof caught malaria in the Congo), he goes to where the most deprived people on Earth live for his stories. He does what few columnists are willing or able to do by exposing how children, the elderly, and entire families are dying under the most unimaginable cruelty.

I suspect that what keeps Kristof going is that he sees how inexpensively many of these mortalities and morbidities can and have been prevented. For example, a $4 vaccine can prevent cervical cancer, which kills over 900 women worldwide every day!

Knowing all this has led to his sharp denunciation of Tyrant Trump and DOGE Director Felon Elon Musk’s immediate and illegal closure of the Agency for International Development (USAID). Soon after the failed gambling czar re-disgraced the White House on January 20, 2025, the world heard Musk’s sadistic boast, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper.”

Why on Earth would these callous corporatists criminally destroy an Agency with an average budget of $23 billion a year (about 10 days of the Trump-bloated Pentagon war budget) to save the lives of millions of babies, children, women, and men? Especially when much of this spending goes right back to U.S. contractors who ship the food, medicines, drinking water, wheelchairs, medical devices, and other materials to poverty-stricken nations.

The Trump/Musk cabal sadistically exuded glee, declaring they were saving taxpayer money. The money........

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