JUST IN: CBS’ USAID Sob Story Goes Down In Flames After ‘Worker’ Is Identified As Liberal Operative

A CBS News hit piece on the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency’s dismantlement of USAID has come undone after one of its reporters’ key sources turned out to be a liberal operative with an anti-Trump agenda.

A “60 Minutes” special presentation on DOGE’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development showcased Kristina Drye, a federal worker who innocently portrayed herself as a working stiff unsure of where her next paycheck would come from after it was announced that all but 290 of USAID’s 10,000 employees would be laid off. Her eyes glistened on the verge of tears as she told an interviewer how her former colleagues’ bills for daycare and medical treatments would now go unpaid.

“People are really scared,” Drye said on the Sunday night broadcast. “I think that, you know, twelve days ago, people knew where their next paycheck was coming from. They knew how they were going to pay for their kids’ daycare, their medical bills. And then, all gone overnight.”

Anchor Scott Pelley described a “chaotic shutdown” of foreign aid by DOGE head Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, both of whom have accused the pork-laden agency of doling out taxpayer dollars on “woke” agenda items preferred by the Biden-Harris administration. Some of those expenditures were detailed by DOGE over the weekend in its latest report, including $486 million for a vague “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening” program, including $22 million for an “inclusive and participatory political process” in Moldova and $21 million for voter turnout in India.

As it turns out, Drye and her counterpart on the show, former USAID worker Adam Dubard, were not employees at all. They were “consultants” hired by the agency after plum political careers working for Democratic politicians. According to a LinkedIn page found by the Daily Wire, Drye, a “speechwriter and communications analyst” for USAID, previously worked as a speechwriter for Samantha Power, the USAID administrator who was a senior aide to former President Barack Obama.

Dubard, who listed himself on his LinkedIn profile as a “Communications Analyst for XLA working with the USAID Public Engagement team within the Bureau of Legislative and Public Affairs (LPA),” had worked at USAID for less than a year.

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Drye appeared to put some distance between herself and the actual USAID workforce, which she described to “60 Minutes” as “they” while lamenting their plight.

“And they had to leave the building,” she said. “And these are folks who had decades and decades of public service serving USAID across administrations from, you know, George Bush, to Obama, to the first Trump administration. And they were never able to walk back in the building again.”

Dubard chimed in, saying the Trump administration was “not looking for competency” in its firings or whether someone is “good at their job.” Instead, he alleged, the mass layoffs were about “looking for pure loyalty tests and if you don’t give it, you will be punished.”

Conservative journalist Erick Erickson decried the double standard of “60 Minutes” and other outlets.

“When Dems are in charge, the press highlights beneficiaries of policies,” Erickson posted on X. “When Republicans are in charge, the press highlights victims of policies. You never heard from the people who lost their jobs when Biden killed the Keystone XL, etc.”

The CBS show is still contending with a $20 billion lawsuit brought by President Trump, who accused its reporters of deceptively editing an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris last year to make their coverage appear more favorable. Executives at the network appear poised to reach a settlement with Trump after a judge refused their request to dismiss the lawsuit.