Texas representative on Trump administration’s plans for USAID

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Representative Mike McCaul (R-TX) spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about President Donald Trump's plans for USAID.

Brennan said there were "30 million metric ton of food sitting at a port in Houston all week because there weren't US workers to unload the food aid, food American taxpayers had already bought. Food that Secretary Rubio said should be delivered, but wasn't," due to a mass confusion with USAID.

When asked how the mass confusion is increasing efficiency, McCaul said:

"If I could peel back on that a little bit, the confusion, I think, goes back to the Biden administration when they started to implement these woke policies of drag queen shows in Ecuador, when they started talking about LGBTQIA programs like, say, in Latin American countries, how to sue Catholic governments, promoting atheism in Nepal, where you have Tibetan Buddhist monks...but this is what gave the USAID a black eye. I personally believe that USAID has a national security mission. If you go back to its inception in the '60s under President Kennedy and the Cold War, it was to counter the Soviet Union. We need to return to the core mission principles."

Brennan then asked McCaul "why not review and then take action" regarding the confusion, and McCaul said:

"There's a debate about whether you should, you know- there is a top to bottom review. I think, after what happened under the Biden administration, it absolutely needs to be reviewed to get back to the core mission, as I talked about. So that is being done. At the same time putting a halt on all humanitarian assistance and life saving medicines, I think that's where...Secretary Rubio issued these waivers for a reason, in consultation with the president, President Trump, and it seems to me, his department needs to start implementing the waivers."

Brennan then asked if this was done intentionally, or do people like Pete Marocco, who Secretary of State Marco Rubio authorized to run USAID, not know how the department work, and if he will bring Marocco to Congress and "answer questions since there's a hearing on USAID this week," McCaul answered in part:

"I do think the administration has provided, by the way, notification and consultation with the Foreign Affairs committee that I chaired, and that is required, under law. They have done that. I think if they decide to terminate, that's a whole nother issue. My understanding is that they want to look at putting USAID underneath the State Department, which is not a novel concept...I think putting it under State makes a lot of sense to me, to provide the direct supervision and oversight."

During the interview, Brennan and McCaul talked about President Trump ordering all foreign assistance to South Africa be halted and said the U.S. "should prioritize the resettling of Afrikaner refugees," prompting Brennan to ask McCaul if he's going to help lift that, to which McCaul said:

"Yeah. I believe, you know, I did a comprehensive investigation that- the debacle of Afghanistan that the Biden administration was responsible for, including leaving our Afghan partners behind...And I do believe that it was an unintended consequence that needs to be fixed. Look, we promised them we would protect them when they worked with our servicemen and women in Afghanistan. These are the interpreters, the ones who are right alongside our combat veterans. They have these special immigrant visas and P1, P2 and it's my- my view, that they should be allowed to go forward with the SIV program. And they have been vetted, by the way, Margaret, they have been vetted. Unlike some of the other groups they talked about, these have been vetted. They worked with our troops to defeat the Taliban, which unfortunately, Biden surrendered to. But it seems to me, we ought to live up to our word, otherwise down the road in another conflict, no one's going to trust us."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with McCaul, click here.