U2 frontman Bono has a message for Christians and Jews who support President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency: you're not really people of faith.
During an appearance on The Interview, a podcast produced by The New York Times, the Irish singer argued that supporting DOGE's cuts to foreign aid programs like USAID is incompatible with Christian and Jewish teachings. Bono insisted that anyone who backs the spending reductions is complicit in what he described as a looming humanitarian catastrophe.
He pointed to a widely circulated Lancet Global Health estimate claiming that USAID cuts could lead to the deaths of five million children under five by 2030.
"I don't know how many fatalities will eventually be attributed to the DOGE cuts. There are many different estimates, there's modeling. If you go to, say, the Lancet, British, um, most journal, most respected medical journal, one of the most, they suggest I think up to 2030 maybe five million children under five."
Bono's comments were first reported by Breitbart, which noted that the Lancet's claims have been "thoroughly debunked and shown to be wildly overestimated in every respect." The outlet pointed to a glaring inconsistency: in 2025, the Lancet claimed that USAID had saved the lives of 92 million people worldwide. But during the same period, actual statistics showed that only 79 million people would have died if death rates had remained steady from the start of the period in question. In other words, the Lancet's claim that USAID saved 92 million lives was mathematically impossible, since the 79 million figure represents the total number of people who would have died absent the program, not the number saved by it.
Bono, who has spent decades positioning himself as a global humanitarian and has long advocated for increased foreign aid, did not offer evidence beyond the Lancet modeling during the podcast appearance. He did not address the fraud and waste that DOGE has documented in its audits of federal agencies, nor did he acknowledge the Trump administration's argument that taxpayer dollars should not be sent to programs that lack accountability.
For Americans who support DOGE's mission, Bono's remarks are the latest example of celebrities using moral shame to defend a federal bureaucracy that has lost the trust of the public. The singer's claim that faith requires support for unchecked foreign aid spending is a political argument dressed up as theology, and it ignores the reality that many Christians and Jews view stewardship of taxpayer money as a moral obligation in itself.
The White House has not publicly responded to Bono's comments. Neither has Musk, though the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly said that DOGE's mission is to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse, not to cut legitimate programs.
Bono's interview comes as the Trump administration continues its push to downsize the federal government and redirect spending toward domestic priorities. The Department of Government Efficiency, led by Musk, has already identified billions in what it describes as improper payments and duplicative programs.
For the millions of Americans who voted for Trump and Musk's efficiency agenda, the singer's attempt to question their faith is likely to land with a thud.
Our Take
Bono has spent years lecturing the world from a stage, and now he's moved to a New York Times podcast to tell Christians and Jews they're not really faithful if they support cutting wasteful government spending. That's not moral clarity. That's a multimillionaire rock star using his platform to shame working-class Americans who are tired of watching their tax dollars vanish into foreign bureaucracies with zero accountability.
The Lancet study he cites has been debunked. The math doesn't add up. And the idea that faith requires blind support for USAID — an agency that DOGE has found riddled with fraud and mismanagement — is absurd on its face. Christians and Jews have every right to demand that government spending be honest, effective, and accountable to the people who pay for it.
Bono should stick to music. The American people aren't buying his sermon.
