Elon Musk has responded to “Kids will die” allegations after the US government cancelled contracts with the company that makes specialised peanut butter for malnourished children. Mark Moore, CEO and co-founder of MANA Nutrition in Fitzgerald, Georgia, learned that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was canceling its contracts with the company. This news prompted Jon Favreau, host of the Pod Save America podcast, to post on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “Kids will die because Elon Musk starved them of food we already paid for.”
Elon Musk responded, “We will investigate whether this is real or not and fix it if it is.” Later, he provided an update, stating, “The contract mentioned above with Edesia had already been restored last week and they should receive payment this coming week.”
Musk further clarified, “No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding. No one.”
He also added a sharp comment directed at Favreau and the media: “Nor are these funding resumption actions due to pressure from K-Mart (I’m not promoting him to Target yet) Favs or some legacy news journalist. I give zero f**s what the legacy press says and have made that abundantly clear.”
Here’s what Elon Musk said
No one has died as result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding. No one.
Nor are these funding resumption actions due to pressure from K-Mart (I’m not promoting him to Target yet) Favs or some legacy news journalist. I give zero fucks what the legacy press says and have made that abundantly clear.
There are two parts to resuming funding:
1. Releasing the pause on the contracts. That was done ~2 weeks ago regarding Ebola/diseases and foodstuffs, which were part of a large block of paused contracts. What I said at the cabinet meeting was accurate.
2. The money itself getting processed through various State, Treasury and Fed accounts and then ultimately getting to the recipient’s bank account. This takes a few weeks.
The contract has been reinstated by the US government.
