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May 5, 2025 14:14-14:41 - CSPAN
26:50
Cindy McCain on Foreign Aid
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k
kelly odonnell
nbc 03:30
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
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World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain spoke about the importance of foreign aid in a conversation hosted by the McCain Institute in Sedona, Arizona.
The widow of the late Senator John McCain specifically addressed the important role food aid has in protecting U.S. interests.
This is just under 40 minutes.
Good afternoon.
Welcome to this year's humanitarian luncheon.
We promised it will be a little bit different than last year's.
It is my honor and pleasure to introduce two women that I care deeply about.
Off the record, they love really bad TV, junk food, and care about their dogs deeply.
They are also the godmothers of my son.
On the record, Sydney McCain is the executive director of the World Food Program, dealing with a crisis that is 343 million people hungry every day.
She just had a $4 billion budget cut and had to lay off 6,000 people.
The need is intense.
We are at a 2017 budget with three times the need.
Today, she'll get into how important food security is, what's happening in the world, and how we can make a difference in this room.
Interviewing her today is Kelly O'Donnell, award-winning journalist who has served in many crises, the halls of the White House, interviewed Senator McCain early on and throughout his career, and is a longtime friend of both the family and the Institute.
Ladies.
Thank you, Megan.
Hello, everyone.
Good to see you.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
I'm particularly excited about our conversation because there are both important policy and public service things to talk about and a few fun things for us to talk about as well.
unidentified
Let's start, though.
We are under the banner of a cause greater than.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
And so much of the conversation here is about that vision, the principles behind it, and the courage it takes to do it.
Do you feel we are in a moment where it is harder for that ideal to break through, given all of the mood of the country and the world and the conflicts that are around us?
unidentified
Is it harder today to support a cause greater than oneself?
I think, first of all, thank you for being here.
I'm very grateful.
And it is different from last year.
Anyway, I think it's yes, to answer the direct question, I think yes, it is more difficult to do that.
But it's not without people wanting to do it.
I truly believe in the great spirit of Americans because we are the ones that give.
We're there.
We're the first ones on the ground.
We're always on the edge of making sure that we can make it better and do it better, make it better, fix whatever it is, save whoever it is.
But it's becoming difficult.
It's right now, Megan mentioned, we took a $4 billion with a B billion dollar cut in funding.
We have needs right now that I, it's so you know of many of them, but there's many that you don't know about that are just as tragic as the ones that get the headlines.
So with that, it's been very difficult for us at the World Food Program to prioritize because everything's a priority and starving people are a priority.
And so I have to make the decisions and have made the decisions to take food from the hungry to give to the starving because I don't have enough food now.
And so it's been, it's been, this has been a rough couple of years because the world's on fire.
I've never seen it like this.
None of us have.
And it's becoming more difficult because the political climate is more difficult now.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
And that climate includes sort of an American focus inward.
unidentified
The administration supports that.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
Many of the people who voted for President Trump have that kind of a view, making it probably a harder sell to talk about giving in a global way.
Part of the conversations here have certainly focused on military capability, economic strength, innovation.
unidentified
And all of those are things that put us into kind of the hard power of the United States.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
The soft power has long been one of the jewels of American leadership, but it may be having a moment where it's harder.
unidentified
What do you see in your role about what could be lost?
What is at stake when it comes to American soft power?
Well, I'll begin with the discussion that's rather new to this arena: food security is national security.
Food security is national security.
And without the basics being food and medicine, et cetera, people are either going to die, they're going to migrate, or they're going to start a conflict.
And that's exactly what's happening right now.
The soft power advantage, and I'll speak directly about WFP, of course, but the soft power advantage that we have is that we make a difference in the communities.
It's not just about the individual.
One of our programs, for example, is called our school feeding programs.
Kids who can't get food at home, their parents can't feed them, especially little girls, can go to school and be fed because one of our programs exists in that school.
And it does more than just feed the kids because we usually buy locally so that the local economy is helped by that and it's fresher, it's better for them, et cetera, all those kinds of things.
So just that's one example in many programs that we have that deal with the soft power arena.
And this one's very successful and very necessary too.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
And what have you seen when you have been in places deploying resources where some of them bear the American flag or people associate you with the United States, certainly all the other global partners?
unidentified
But what do you see about the influence that that can generate?
Well, I've seen the look on people's faces when they see when we open our trucks or begin to offload the bags with the American flag on the front of it.
I mean, that gives not just food, it gives hope.
It gives help and hope.
And hope is a large part of even surviving the circumstances of most of the people that I work with and work for, there are beneficiaries, in this particular way.
The United States of America is successful, it's generous, it's kind.
So when they see the U.S. flag or they see us coming in one way or another, they really believe, and rightly so, that they're going to be okay.
That's a huge soft power advantage, believe me, because I've seen it work.
But it's also something now we're not going to have because of the cuts.
And as you know, USAID was cut, I guess, cut out completely now.
That's a large part of what's very important.
And from your experience, what does that disruption potentially mean?
If aid were restarted in a matter of a few years, is that enough to fix the problem?
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
Or is once an interruption like this takes place and some of that soft power is diminished, is it harder to get it restarted?
unidentified
What is your sense of?
I think it's going to be really hard, primarily because the Chinese are moving in.
We, you know, if we're not there, there's a vacuum.
Meaning the agencies, there's a huge vacuum.
And Chinese, the Russians, you know, you name it, the bad guys are all over the place, especially in Africa.
And so that's what happens.
And they're ready and willing to fill the void.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
And when you talk about food security being national security, I'm pretty sure you don't just mean in the countries in which we're deploying these resources.
unidentified
You're talking about the United States.
I am talking about the United States.
And expand on that a little.
Well, in areas of the world that are extraordinarily complicated, food security is directly tied to national security for this reason.
Migration, conflict, disease, control, all of those things complicate national security, and it will complicate it for us because we usually get drug into it or are already there.
So keeping people fed is not only the right thing to do, it's a good investment for the United States of America.
And it's also something that down the road, one quick story.
There's a young man that works for us in WFP now and lives in Rome where we're at.
And he came to me one day, just after bully walked in my office and he said, I have to tell you something.
And I said, of course.
Can I help you?
What is it?
He said, this organization fed me when I was a child.
My parents had to migrate.
They were on the road.
They didn't have any food.
Their father died as a result of it.
And he said, I'm alive and well today and successful because of WFP.
That's the kind of thing, that's the difference we make.
And that's not a single story.
That's cross-border on this.
So our organization and other organizations, this is very, very important to this national security and security of the United States of America.
And the southern border, of course, complicates this for us, as you know.
And you are on the front lines and you see and experience those kinds of personal reactions.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
Is there another sort of moment you could share of something where you were in one of those places where the need is so great and you could see almost that moment of transformation?
unidentified
Yeah.
There's a what part of our program is feeding infants.
And so we have this special paste that's manufactured, high protein, high everything, to take infants up to the age of one from malnutrition and starvation back into a healthy weight and healthy diet.
And so I've seen that.
I've seen that work firsthand.
And it's just the inability now to be able to give that in bulk and at scale is, they're just going to die.
I mean, I have no other way to put it other than this is something that will completely devastate not just communities, but countries, whole countries.
Give us a sense of the scale of what you are seeing.
When you talk about making a decision between someone hungry and someone starving, that is, that really resonates with what you're up against.
There are no easy days in your business.
Give us a sense of the scale of the need today and how it has changed.
Well, as Megan mentioned, we have three times more need than we had in 2017, which is the funding level that we're at right now.
The scale is enormous, especially, and I'll give you Sudan for an example.
Sudan is the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet.
Not many people know that because no one cares.
And I don't mean people care, but I mean the media sometimes doesn't care.
People that give us the news either don't care or just are not tuned into it.
And so when you see, and I've seen it with my own eyes, because a large portion of them go across the border into Chad, and there's millions of people living on the other side of the border now.
It's, you know, we're talking about feeding in one camp, 1.2 million people.
Staggering.
That's just one camp.
And now, of course, there's been starvation on that.
There's cross-border issues are very difficult.
But now it's become complicated because the bad guys have moved in there.
They're killing people in the camps.
There was a mass murder just a couple weeks ago in one of our big camps.
It killed about 400 people at one time.
So it's without food and without the ability for people to have access to clean water and food, it just, it's a recipe for disaster, I can't tell you.
And it's compounding.
Yeah.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
So in all the years that I've known you covering you, getting to know you better, the one thing I've always learned about Cindy, there is no like ordinary girl's trip.
When she is traveling, she is headed to some destination that likely the State Department has a warning about.
unidentified
So you go to a lot of places that other people would be afraid to go.
And you've done it for a long time, long before World Food Program.
How has that changed your view of are these solvable problems?
For me, it was like everyone, when you begin work like this or you get involved in things like this, it starts from an experience of some kind.
And I had an experience that just not only opened my eyes, but broke my heart.
And so what I see is the spirit of Americans particularly wanting to do something, not knowing how to do it or if they can do it or being afraid to do it.
I mean, I'm not suggesting anybody in this room go to the places I go.
You can't get there anyway unless you fly on one of our airplanes.
But the need is so great.
And like I said before, Americans are always the first ones and they step up to the plate.
And we need the American spirit more than ever right now in these places, in these countries.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
And there are some tangible benefits to sectors of the American economy when it comes to this.
unidentified
So for example, when you talked about school programs, American farmers are part of the pipeline of supplies.
Yes, they are.
Which I think many people are not tapped into unless they're in those circles.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
So when people are talking about there are a lot of problems in the United States and we should focus here and we have fiscal issues here and there are certainly no shortage of problems domestically in the United States to try to tackle.
How do you try to tell the story of why it is worth it for the American people and the leaders they send to Congress who do the appropriations to continue to pursue these kinds of programs?
unidentified
Well, just one example in this is, of course, our American farmers who are the backbone of this country.
In the last five years, WFP, just WFP, there's other organizations that do too.
We've pumped back into the U.S. economy $6 billion because we buy the commodities, you know, we source many, many, many different things, not just the bags of food that you see, but many, many other things, including equipment, et cetera.
So it's not a bad deal for the U.S. in terms of what we do, but it's also, it's how it's prescribed, it's how it's described.
And unfortunately, I think foreign aid, as they call it, I hate that term, but that's foreign aid is a dirty word.
And I think right now, it seems to be a dirty word.
Many institutions.
Because Americans want to help.
They want to help.
They really do.
They want to help.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
But part of the question has come, a lot of distrust in institutions, questions about the integrity and effectiveness of institutions, many kinds.
unidentified
How do you deal with that issue where people say we want to make certain there's accountability?
We want to make certain that, especially on the scale of World Food Program, one of the largest, the largest humanitarian organization in the world.
So how do you defend the institution or push the institution to be accountable?
Well, you know, we're no different than any other country.
There's fat in many of these organizations and in many of the way it's inefficient and things like that.
I had a very lucky opportunity because I was the U.S. ambassador to the Rome-based agencies prior to taking on this role.
So I saw it from the other side and I saw the waste and mismanagement.
I saw, so when I came on board two years ago, we've already done that.
We have cleaned up.
We're not fat anymore.
We're efficient.
We're effective.
We have trimmed way down in the numbers of people.
We still have ways to go because of the recent cuts.
But it's the right thing to do.
We need to be good stewards of our donor dollars.
And especially for me, the United States.
So I took it very personally when I saw the waste and the mismanagement and the ineffectiveness and the non-use of anything technologically advanced.
And so we've come about face in two years.
And I don't think the former folks will recognize how we operate because we're different now.
And I knew we had to adapt to the times because I could see what was going to happen with the funding.
But for us, I'm very grateful that we've done that.
We faced this particular dilemma with regards to funding in a different way.
And we've also encouraged our European partners and our private sector partners and of course private family donors, et cetera, to step up to the plate and help us out.
This is a problem that not one country can fix or help.
We need everybody involved in this, absolutely everybody, to make sure that people don't do the things that I described, the starvation, the migration, the sounds like you were a little bit ahead of Elon Musk in the rooting out of.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
And so, are there some technical things that are available today that weren't maybe a few years or even a generation ago that can help to deliver or execute or assess what your needs are?
unidentified
Well, right now, we are in the process of implementing drones for drone food drops in some areas that are really dicey and really dangerous.
That's a good option for us.
It really keeps our people safe.
Giving the smallholder farmers the ability to predict weather patterns, changes, water usage, those kinds of things, and the tools to do it, because it can all run off a cell phone.
That's another way that we put into the field.
We do cash-based transfers.
Now, why you may say, oh my God, the cash is going in the hands of the bad guys.
It's not.
It's going in the hands of the women, and it's a voucher on their phone, and they can't get it without their face and their phone.
So, those kinds of things have made it easier, has made food more accessible, it's fresher, it helps the local economies.
That's something that we designed and implemented, and now it's UN-wide, UN system-wide.
And you have been at the helm during a period where we've seen two very prominent wars.
You talked about the emergency in Sudan, but there's been a lot of focus on Ukraine and a lot of focus on Gaza.
You are someone who has been on the ground in Gaza.
You've seen it up close.
Where is that crisis as it stands today?
Efforts toward peace, but there are still difficulties in getting aid in.
What's your assessment right now?
Well, right now, we're not getting anything in.
There has not been an ounce of food delivered inside Gaza since March 2nd, I think it was, was the last ability to get it in.
The last usable food dried up about 10 days ago.
So, there is no, I mean, there is nothing on the ground to eat or utilize in any way.
There's no medicine, there's no food, none of that.
World Central, Nate Mooks here someplace.
World Central Kitchen has the same problem, and they're unable to cook.
You know, they have their kitchens and stuff.
And so they're suffering from the same problem we are.
And the impediments are many.
Yeah, but what stands in the way, do you think, for any kind of a breakthrough there?
And do you see any sense of opportunity coming?
Okay.
Food should never be politicized, and that's what's happening.
Food is being, I won't say it's a weapon.
I'm not going to use that term because I don't believe that.
But I do believe, I do know that it's right now it's being, it's a political pawn in all of it's a leverage point.
It is absolutely.
And so those kinds of things have to be dealt with from a political level.
That's why I talk to my European friends a lot and others to help me help me deal with the situation because we need help.
We need the voices of the leaders around the world to stop this and make sure that we can continue to feed.
But the world's complicated, and that may sound trite, but it's complicated.
And we're kind of tied up in it.
And I think the lack of understanding about who we are and what we do and why we're important is something that I think is not understood by many of our newer politicians within the government and other governments too.
That's some of the diplomacy and outreach part of your role.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
Are you finding you have to pivot in ways to find new partners or to draw attention in new ways?
unidentified
You talked about outreach to Europe, to donor families, things like that.
Where are the potential opportunities for a breakthrough in terms of increasing awareness and maybe getting more action?
Well, people are listening now.
I mean, we're not having any problem getting in the door at all.
It's just a matter of how they see how they fit in.
A lot of organizations don't want to give to the emergency.
They'd rather give to the development side of it.
Well, the truth is, we can't get to the development side until we feed the emergency.
Why is that?
What's the reasoning behind that?
You know, I think they feel it's more of a long-term investment, which it is.
I mean, it's a good use of money, but we still need the funding to be able to do what we're doing in Gaza, what we're doing in DRC, what we're doing in Sudan, Somalia, you know, the Sahel, all the way across.
The idea that somehow we can, like, Africa is like an afterthought.
And I'm not suggesting anyone in this room believes that, but there are some organizations and some people that really think it's just hopeless.
Let's get out.
Why do anything there?
We can't do that.
We cannot do that.
And so organizations like WFP and others have maintained a very strong presence all across the continent.
And we need to stay because it's getting larger and it's getting worse.
And it's also not enabling their own people to try to help themselves.
So we've got to feed the emergency first and then we'll go straight into the development then.
And what are the other hotspots that keep you up at night?
Oh, God.
Well, Ukraine, of course.
Ukraine.
I think initially it was Sudan.
It's actually all of them.
I don't know why I even hesitate.
It's all the above.
What I can't fathom is having to make the choices.
And it's been really hard for me.
It does keep me awake.
I have shed tears over it.
I have tried to figure out what am I missing?
What can I do better?
Who can I talk to?
Anybody?
And I will work with anybody to be able to feed people.
And it's important that we all work together for this.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
Do you get a sense that there's a political climate willing to receive you when you say I'll work with anybody?
unidentified
Well, yes, I can speak to the ones that already have done that, and I'm hoping others will too.
But it's when I tell them, you know, we're neutral.
We are of a sevil part of the United Nations.
We have no agenda other than to feed.
That's what we do.
So there's no politics involved in what we do.
And in fact, we can't even really talk about politics within the confines of the UN.
It's all around you, so it is not what you deal in.
kelly odonnell ▲ ● ▼
Because you're based in Rome, you've had a chance to get to know someone who was one of your neighbors in Pope Francis.
And obviously, a conclave is soon to begin, and there will be a new leader of the Catholic Church.
But is there anything you can just share about what it was like to experience his presence and his concerns about the work that you do?
unidentified
What a glorious man he was.
We're leaving this here to take you live to Capitol Hill, where the House is gathering in for legislative business.
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