Sec. Marco Rubio Grilled By Reporter About Lack Of U.S. Humanitarian Response To Myanmar Earthquake

Forbes Breaking News

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.   Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript   Stay Connected Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com

Transcript

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.

Category

Transcript

Recommended