I’m supportive of international public health aid when it comes to cheap interventions like dispensing HIV and TB and malaria meds. (I am a lib 🤷‍♂️ .) However, Kristof is just making everything worse. First, you can’t hysterically crybully Americans into supporting these programs and trying to do so instead of making a calm, measured case just makes people reactive and oppositional because it’s so obviously a cynical, manipulative tactic. Second, it’s not our responsibility to fill up anyone’s gas tank. All of these initiatives have to be completely reconsidered and our obligations need to be clearly defined. That Kristof can’t intuit that Americans would oppose filling foreign gas tanks demonstrates just how out of touch he is and that he’s bound to do more harm than good in attempting to propagandize on behalf of international public health. Third, none of these vignettes meet even the most basic evidentiary standards to support his assertions. Furthermore, this isn’t how it’s done - big programs need to be supported by population level data and Kristof is obviously trying to be emotionally manipulative with anecdotes rather than addressing the policy questions in the right way with the right type of data. Fourth, it’s lazy and cynical to try to lay this all on Musk. Maybe you shouldn’t have billion dollar ‘managed democracy’ and leftist NGO dark money sinkholes wearing the skin suit of true humanitarian programs. Maybe the people who designed these programs as such deserve a little more (or a lot more) of the blame for intentionally putting them in proximity to legitimate political targets. Every time I read a half-informed journo trying to do advocacy for foreign health aid I cringe because it’s clear they don’t know what they’re talking about and are making lazy, motivated assertions that are bound to backfire and make things worse. If journos really cared about these issues and weren’t just scrounging for cheap partisan artillery they’d be a lot more carful, thoughtful, and reserved in what they’re arguing.