Mike Benz

Former State Department official Mike Benz shed light Tuesday on the growing global pushback against populist movements, saying  that the CIA views these movements as a “global menace.”

House Republicans are pushing to allocate hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to an organization that the Trump administration aimed to defund, with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recommending the elimination of federal funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) due to its pattern of partisan advocacy and hostility toward Republicans, as well as its alleged bias against conservatives, censorship, and interference in foreign affairs. Benz explained on “Bannon’s War Room” that, when the Cold War ended, U.S. foreign policy institutions, designed to combat communism, found a new target in populist movements around the world.

“War found a new global menace, which was the global rise of populist parties. From Trump in the U.S. to Nigel Farage in the Brexit and Reform Party movements in the U.K. to Maureen Le Pen in France and Matteo Salvini in Italy and Bolsonaro in Brazil,” Benz said. “They faced this kind of unofficial, undeclared Second Cold War in the form of populism.”

The NED, Benz said, has aggressively targeted these movements, viewing them as threats to the liberal international order that has defined U.S. foreign policy since the Cold War.

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“And the National Endowment for Democracy descended like a pack of vultures to try to essentially harvest, kill, and then eat the corpse of every little populist movement it could,” Benz added. “And so the issue right now with its funding is that you have House Republicans who still feel beholden to the traditional Republican foreign policy base from the Cold War era.”

Benz said that a significant portion of right-wing factions rely heavily on U.S. foreign policy tools, such as the Pentagon, USAID funding, and CIA-backed operations, to expand their markets and secure favorable outcomes in foreign legislation and regulations.

“A lot of right-wing, a lot of corporations, Chamber of Commerce companies, they depend on the battering ram of the Pentagon, of USAID funding, of CIA and clandestine NGO services in order to create their markets, in order to secure favorable legislation or regulations in countries, in order to lock in government contracts, in order to harvest natural resources. And so you have this kind of John McCain wing. John McCain actually ran the Republican side of the National Endowment for Democracy for 25 years,” Benz said. “Who I think is not going to let go of this weapon while it serves so many of their own interests.”

In 2020, NED backed the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which classified conservative outlets like Newsmax and the New York Post as top sources of disinformation. This list was distributed to advertisers in an effort to reduce ad revenue for these outlets, leading to accusations of the NED facilitating censorship of right-wing media.

Critics contend that the NED has overstepped its mandate, channeling taxpayer funds into international political influence and nation-building projects. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, criticized the NED for its role in U.S. actions in Ukraine, claiming its involvement escalated tensions with Russia.

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