Elon Musk says Trump on verge of shutting down USAID: 'A ball of worms, it's beyond repair'

Donald Trump, Elon Musk

Elon Musk on Sunday said on X Spaces that President Donald Trump has agreed the US Agency for International Development (USAID) should be "shut down" following days of speculation about the agency’s future. Musk has been wrestling for control of the agency in recently.

Musk said in an X Spaces session: “With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down.” Musk's comments came after the Trump administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave.

"It became apparent that it's not an apple with a worm it in," Musk said. "What we have is just a ball of worms. You've got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It's beyond repair. ... We're shutting it down."

According to CBS News, USAID staffers were instructed to stay out of the agency's Washington headquarters on Monday. Staffers were quoted by the channel that they tracked 600 employees who reported being locked out of the agency's computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that "at the direction of Agency leadership" the headquarters building "will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb 3".

The Associated Press quoted a current and a former US official told on Sunday that the move came after the two USAID officials refused to allow personnel from the Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access classified material in restricted areas.

Musk's DOGE crew lacked high enough security clearance to access that information, so the two USAID officials believed themselves legally obligated to deny access, the AP reported.

DOGE personnel did eventually gain access Saturday to the aid agency's classified information, which includes intelligence reports, the former official told the AP.

Musk claimed that he checked with Trump a "few times" and Trump confirmed he wants to shut down the agency, which dispenses billions in humanitarian aid and development funding annually. CNN has reached out to the White House and USAID for comment.

Trump himself affirmed his disdain for the agency and its mission of providing foreign aid during a question-and-answer session with reporters late Monday.

“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision” on its future, he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews.

USAID is a key soft power tool of the US to foster relations with communities around the world, officials say, noting that US national security is approached with the “three D” pillars: defense, diplomacy and development, led, respectively, by the Defense Department, State Department and USAID.