During a press conference at NATO headquarters on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about how the United States plans to respond to the recent earthquake in Myanmar.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. Secretary, the Myanmar earthquake, I mean, normally in these kind of events, you would
00:04have up to 200 Americans with sniffer dogs, special equipment, experts in their field,
00:10saving lives on the ground.
00:12This has not happened because of the dismantling of U.S.
00:15All that and the fact that it's run by a military junta that doesn't like us, so it's hard for
00:19us to move around in our country.
00:20Well, I would say it's – these events are always nonpolitical.
00:21They went into Syria, for example, in the Turkey-Syria earthquake, so they can't access
00:22–
00:23Well, we're not the government of the world.
00:28Now, we will provide humanitarian assistance, just like everybody else does, and we will
00:32do it the best we can, but we also have other needs we have to balance that against.
00:35We're not walking away from humanitarian assistance, but again, I go back to a lot
00:39of other rich countries in the world.
00:40They should all be pitching in.
00:41We're going to do our part.
00:42We already have people there.
00:43We'll have more people there.
00:44We'll help as much as we can.
00:46It's not the easiest place to work, okay?
00:47They have a military junta that doesn't like us, doesn't necessarily allow us to
00:51operate in that country the way we wanted to.
00:53That would have impeded our response no matter what.
00:55That said, we are willing to continue to help in the humanitarian crisis.
00:59Other countries need to do so as well.
01:00China's a very rich country.
01:02India's a rich country.
01:03There are a lot of other countries in the world, and everyone should pitch in.
01:06I don't think it's fair to assume that the United States needs to continue to share
01:09the burden – 60, 70 percent of humanitarian aid around the world.
01:12We will be in the business of humanitarian aid, but we have other priorities as well
01:16that are national interest priorities of the United States, and we're going to align
01:19all those to be properly balanced.
01:20This is an issue of soft power.
01:22I mean, all of the experts in this, for several reasons – it's not because of the politics
01:26of Myanmar, but it's because of the dismantling of the USA, and you simply couldn't deploy.
01:30Yeah, I don't listen to these so-called experts.
01:32These are not real experts.
01:33These are so-called experts.
01:34These are people that are part of that NGO industrial complex.
01:39No, no, these are people that make millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in these
01:42NGOs all over the world that stand up and they get flooded with U.S. taxpayer money,
01:46and then we have to spend $100 million to get $10 million to people.
01:50We're not doing that anymore, okay?
01:52We have stopped.
01:53We are no longer going to spend $100 million to get $10 million to recipients.
01:58We're not going to fund these global NGOs all over the world that are living off of this.
02:02We're not doing it.
02:03We are prepared to help and work with governments and appropriate NGOs on the ground that are
02:07delivering assistance.
02:08We will be there and we will be helpful.
02:10There are a lot of other rich countries.
02:11They should also pitch in and help, and some of them are and some of them are not.
02:15But we are going to do our part.
02:16We're going to continue to do our part.
02:18But it's going to be balanced with all of the other interests we have as a country.
02:21We are not a nation.
02:22We are the richest country in the world, but our resources are not unlimited.
02:26They are not unlimited.
02:27And we have a massive national debt and we have many other priorities as well, and it's
02:31time to recalibrate all of that.
02:33So we'll be there.
02:34We'll be helpful as much as we can.
02:35We've got other things we have to take care of as well, but we care deeply about what's
02:38happened there.
02:39We're a cooperative government.