24 Comments
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Jeff Biss's avatar

Yes, Tim, yet one more case of Dump saving taxpayer money by incinerating food rather than getting it to people before expiration! Dump should hang.

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Jean Malarkey's avatar

Thank you for highlighting this atrocity. I read and posted Hana’s Atlantic article the day it came out. So heartless and needlessly wasteful. I hope Marco Rubio has enough of a conscience that he never has a peaceful night of sleep again. Ever. Even if this is 95% incompetence and only 5% intentional malice, it’s evil.

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Ian MacLaren's avatar

I can’t take this. Had to stop listening. This is simply monstrous.

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Virgin Monk Boy's avatar

🔥 America, land of the free lunches for the rich, just paid to burn food that could've fed starving children. If that doesn’t count as a national exorcism emergency, I don’t know what does.

We’ve gone from “When I was hungry, you gave me something to eat” to “When I was hungry, you torched it at the airbase because your donors needed a tax write-off.”

What kind of twisted gospel is this? Oh right—the one where the golden calf got a spray tan and a reality show. The same one that preaches "feed my sheep" while dousing the hay in kerosene.

You know who would’ve had that food in Gaza or Haiti by morning? World Central Kitchen. But mercy isn’t profitable, and cruelty is the point.

When the Beatitudes get bulldozed by budget cuts, the nation starves in spirit before it starves in stomach.

Blessed are the hungry—for they are being sacrificed to Mammon, one dumpster fire at a time.

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Jerry Norman's avatar

Ironic, the party that is opposed to "waste and fraud" does a tremendous amount of both.

Incinerating that much food as the party that received it as a donation happened to be USAID? Punished as its church denominations practice the beatitudes? "When I was hungry, you gave me [something] to eat". T's version of the prosperity gospel seems impoverished.

If "they" don't want immigrants coming here, why aren't "they" making it easier for people to feed themselves where they are? Thanks, Tim, for having this guest from The Atlantic (H. Kiros)

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Nobody from nowhere's avatar

It's encouraging and depressing to hear what a source of good the US was in the world. W's role in pushing food initiatives in the 3rd World is truly under appreciated. I might even have a little more sympathy for current administration if they were decreasing the social safety net abroad to address social safety net issues at home. Instead what we see is the cuts abroad are mirrored by cuts at home for the purpose of being able to comfort the already comfortable by giving them tax cuts - with the higher cuts going to the already most comfortable.

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Robert Woll's avatar

Thank you, Tim, for bringing Hana on to discuss this food incineration, which seems to meet the definition of a crime against humanity. Why wouldn't the remaining State Dept. officials at least reach out to a capable NGO like World Central Kitchen to distribute this food through their network? Are they refusing to take even that step?

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Emy Donavan's avatar

The Grapes of Wrath, man… we’ve just industrialized and funded the waste now, like as a country with our tax dollars… without any thought to the folks that could have consumed it?… Jesus, Lord.

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Parrhizzia's avatar

What, what, what???

Kiros said:

"So, you know, it's enough food to feed all of the kids that are facing acute food insecurity in Gaza for a week, right?"

Food insecurity? In Gaza?

She can't say that! That's inherently antisemitic! All the children of Gaza are well fed, happy and alive! It is Kkkhamas propaganda to say otherwise!

Our sacrosanct ally would never starve children. Here is the hero of the only democracy in the the Middle East, head of the most moral army, Prime Minister Netanyahu, first of his name, debunking Kkkhamas claims of starvation in Gaza:

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/netanyahu-denies-people-are-starving-in-gaza-despite-warnings-of-famine/3581571

Former Israeli spokesman Elon Levy says such claims are "totally made up" and "serving Hamas' war goals".

https://www.timesofisrael.com/gazans-say-no-humanitarian-aid-has-reached-them-day-after-trucks-entered-strip/

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Kentuckistan's avatar

extremism is the defense of Bibi Netanyahu is no vice

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Parrhizzia's avatar

“Moderation in pursuit of legal impunity is no virtue”.

If you can believe it, I recently got thru THE ENTIRE Ross Douthat / Bret Stephens podcast. Aren’t you proud of me?

At the end of that podcast, that terrible, no good, god awful podcast, Stephens made the argument that you can set aside ALL of Israeli’s crimes as it is ALL justifiable because, at some time in the future, American Jews might need a safe place to flee to, a refuge from antisemites.

And that comment sat with me.

Liberal Zionists are willing to commit genocide today on the off chance they need refugee in the future … to maintain an ideology that tolerates genocide.

I wondered to myself if I could ever be that selfish, that self-centered, that wholly without humanity.

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Anita's avatar

They up the cruel ante by the minute. Their depravity knows no bounds.

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Parrhizzia's avatar

Who are you talking about? Trump or Netanyahu?

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Shana's avatar

Yes.

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Anita's avatar

😔

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JacquieCDV's avatar

Yeah, this is the kind of thing that makes me want to transport the orange turd directly to an impoverished country and leave him there by himself without any food or phones or makeup.

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Will G's avatar

I can't bare to read this. Why are people so messed up?

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Amy Cohen's avatar

AMERICA PAID TO LET CHILDREN DIE

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Parrhizzia's avatar

When specifically are you talking about?

This? This is nothing.

Pick a decade? 1990s perhaps? Under Clinton?

500,000 dead Iraqi children under 5 because of Clinton era sanctions.

And when presented with those numbers, Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, said it was “worth it”.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ogNnaF7y7ZM?si=QFUOB09z6bSIdy5A

Trump is not unique. He is not sui generis.

As the song said: This is America.

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Amy Cohen's avatar

Wow. You think these are comparable to the level of deliberate cruelty imposed by this regime? How many Sudanese children are dead in just months because we took away HIV and malaria medication? IT WAS THERE AND THEY WERE FORBIDDEN TO DISTRIBUTE IT.For no fucking reason.How many will die or be crippled by Polio or measles, or countless other preventable diseases because we cut off vaccine programs? In this case we did worse… the food was left for so long that it couldn’t even be used as animal feed. Have other administrations done things that have cost lives? Of course but none as blithely, wantonly, just for the fucking fun of it. Never mind the Ethiopian refugees we murdered by bombing Yemen.

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Parrhizzia's avatar

"You think these are comparable to the level of deliberate cruelty imposed by this regime?"

I think the Clinton era sanctions were far, FAR worse. But, that's just one of the "better" presidents.

"How many Sudanese children are dead in just months because we took away HIV and malaria medication?"

Hundreds? Maybe thousands.

"How many will die or be crippled by Polio or measles, or countless other preventable diseases because we cut off vaccine programs?"

Tens of thousands.

"Have other administrations done things that have cost lives?"

Yes - I just described one incident by one "good" American president. When I said "pick a decade" I wasn't kidding.

Go ahead - pick a decade.

The problem you face is that this REALLY IS AMERICA. I'm not making this up. You're focused on the bad orange man because it's being covered in the media and on The Bulwark, but none of this is new.

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Jen's avatar

Incinerating branded food for the world's poor that says a gift from America pretty much sums up Donald Trump and MAGA. Put that image on his Nobel prize application or better yet his obit.

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Shannon's avatar

This is just so disgusting. Food waste is criminal when so many are starving. I loathe every person who's ever shouted "pro- life" or "all lives matter" and yet voted for this shit. Not that they've ever meant it. These children deserve better than what we currently have to offer. So fucking sad.

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Steven Insertname's avatar

China is going to come in and pick up the slack -- probably after letting them be hungry for a while so they're seen as saviours.

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