USAID actually awarded John Bolton an engraved hand grenade in 1983

Ian Haworth

Feb 12, 2025

Sometimes, the world hands you a metaphor so perfect that it could never, ever, ever be outdone.

On Piers Morgan's show, John Bolton — Donald Trump's beyond-hawkish national security advisor from 2018 to 2019 — displayed a "farewell gift" he received from USAID during the Reagan administration after being in charge of its policy and budget: A personally-engraved USAID hand grenade.

I was in charge of policy and budget at USAID during the Reagan administration, when we undertook a major effort to fix it. And I'm going to show you my farewell present from AID. You can see it's a hand grenade. And it says on it: John R. Bolton, Truest Reaganaut, AID 1983. This is a style of government.

Yes, the same USAID (United States Agency for International Development) that is a supposedly independent agency (lol) with the supposed primary goal of administrating foreign aid (lol), but is actually one of the federal government's many money laundering and/or burning operations that is being picked apart by Elon Musk and his band of merry 19-year-old coders.

So why would USAID be handing out hand grenades (let alone engraved ones)? Good question. But that makes me ask: What do other agencies and institutions give out as farewell gifts?

  • English for Dummies from the Department of Education?

  • An ExpressVPN subscription from the NSA?

  • A coat hanger from Planned Parenthood?


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