[WaPo] Trump moves to wrest control of USAID as Musk says, ‘We’re shutting it down’

An unpaid Russian propagandist quoting another.

 

I guess take the same leap of faith you took when Biden said he wouldn’t pardon his son.

 

Hunter Biden wasnt trying to destroy the government.

 

Just saying that he can choose which lies to believe and which ones not to.

 

LOL 8 million dollars?

This is what they have to show for it so far?

There is even a question if it is "wasteful" .... more money was lost with the time Musk and company have spent compared to any savings.

It does make a good headline though --- like condoms in Gaza, and that is apparently all that matters--- for now at least.

 

Claims That Politico Received USAID Funds Are False
Alex Demas
Wed, February 5, 2025 at 1:55 PM CST·3 min read
1


The Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance as it looks to curb unnecessary federal spending across the government. At the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—the primary U.S. agency responsible for providing humanitarian assistance abroad—hundreds of staff have been placed on administrative leave as the White House considers shuttering the agency’s operations entirely. With USAID in the national headlines, a viral post is now claiming that Politico LLC, the company that publishes Politico and several other publications, received substantial funds from the agency. “Fun Fact: @Politico received USAID funds. Everything makes sense now,” Kyle Becker, a former Fox News producer, wrote on X.

The post, which had been viewed more than 2 million times as of midday Wednesday, includes a screenshot showing that Politico LLC received $8.1 million from the agency. In a follow-up post, Becker linked USAID funding freezes to a payroll issue at the company earlier this week. “The ‘technical error’ was reportedly resolved,” Becker wrote, referencing an email sent to Politico employees explaining that the issue had been caused by a system glitch. “The error of sending U.S. taxpayer money to a biased, partisan, establishment publication, however, is being fixed.”

The claim was picked up by right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson, who called the news “the biggest scandal in news media history” in an X post with more than 3 million views. “No employee at Politico got paid yesterday. First time ever the company missed a pay period. This is a crisis,” Johnson wrote. “Now we learn Politico — a ‘news company’ — which spent the last 10 years trying to destroy the MAGA Movement was being massively funded by USAID.

Becker and Johnson’s claims are false. The only payments received by Politico LLC from USAID were for two subscriptions to E&E—an energy and environment publication it produces—totaling $44,000 over two years.
According to USAspending.gov, an official source for U.S. government expenditure data—and the resource used by Becker in his post—Politico received $8.2 million in total payments from government departments and agencies between fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2025. However, only $44,000 of this total came from USAID.

In September 2023, a staff assistant for the Center for Environment, Energy, and Infrastructure—part of USAID’s Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation—purchased a subscription to E&E for $20,000. According to E&E, prices for its professional subscription packages typically start in the upper four-figure range and vary based on how many users have access to a subscription. Another subscription to E&E was purchased in September 2024 for $24,000 by the Center for Climate Positive Development—an office within USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security.

Funds received by Politico LLC from other government agencies also came mostly from subscriptions to E&E, or for the company’s policy intelligence platform, Politico Pro. The largest spenders have been the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of the Interior (DOI), and Department of Energy (DOE).

In July 2020, for example, HSS paid $73,857 for a Politico Pro subscription licensed for 37 users. The department exercised options to extend the contract in 2021 and 2022, and eventually increased its subscription to 49 users in 2023 for $130,185. The DOI similarly purchased a subscription to E&E in September 2021 for $200,000, which it has been extending since. The DOE has also been extending a Politico Pro contract since June 2020 for a four-year total of more than $400,000.

Neither Politico nor Johnson returned a request for comment from The Dispatch Fact Check. Becker could not be immediately reached.

 

He used to be conservative -- now he's one of the biggest anti-MAGA voices out there. On TV all the time. He's probably under blackmail control by the intel agencies.

 

“I looked at these contracts and I have my own fun fact,” Byron Tau, an investigative reporter at the Associated Press, said via X. “This is occurring because agencies (not just USAID) are buying subscriptions to Politico’s Pro editorial product, not because Politico is getting grants or other federal funding.”

The Trump administration’s focus on the false narrative that Politico received USAID funds follows an erroneous claim by Kyle Becker, a conservative political commentator, on Wednesday. In an X thread, Becker tied a Tuesday report from Semafor that showed Politico staffers hadn’t been paid over a “technical error” that was subsequently fixed to a USASpending.gov page that shows Politico received $8.2 million across 237 transactions.

 

There are conservatives who aren't Trump followers. You think Dick Cheney isn't a conservative anymore?
Believe me he and his daughter are still war mongering neo cons

 

Who carees if they did?

Politico just sanewashes Trump's dumb **** all day long and is owned by German MAGA enthusiast.

 

Meanwhile... chaos, less safety, more waste

https://www.yahoo.com/news/usaid-upheaval-paralyzing-delivery-food-021418126.html

“I urge @SecRubio to distribute the $340 million in American-grown food currently stalled in U.S. ports to reach those in need,” Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., wrote on X. “Time is running out before this life-saving aid perishes.”

“It is a Republican initiative, it is pro-life, pro-America and the most popular U.S. program in Africa,” Cassidy wrote on X. “There’s even a waiver acknowledging this, yet I’m told that drugs are still being held at clinics in Africa. This must be reversed immediately!!”

Kaleb Brownlow, a former senior USAID adviser, said there could be serious health implications from suddenly stopping medication like HIV antiretrovirals, including higher viral loads and the development of drug resistance.

“There’s more viral particles circulating your body, which causes an impact to your own self, but also means that you can spread the disease and increase the likelihood of transmission,” said Brownlow, who was among the hundreds of USAID workers who were laid off last week.

Brownlow described his final days of work as a “complete scramble” as colleagues tried to redirect HIV, malaria and tuberculosis medication to warehouses around the globe.

“There was no attempt to actually phase this out — this was just a complete abandonment,” said Brownlow.

 

Of all the things Trump has done in his first 2+ weeks, the liberals are squealing the loudest at the USAID closure. This tells me that this is where the corruption was occurring. If it wasn't so important to Democrats, they wouldn't have put Samantha Power in charge of it. She's one of their top people -- a position earned by her loyalty, extreme partisanship, and ability to lie. She's also married to Cass Sunstein -- one of the most hardcore liberal thought "leaders". All of these crazy issues that you say 'how can journalists promote these absurd policy positions'... well, now we know these journalists were being paid off by USAID. The same is true of foreign countries who adopted absurd liberal policy positions... we also know that USAID funded many intel agency escapades abroad... It's a liberal slush fund - intended to do things either deceitfully (bribes) or in a clandestine manner (CIA agitation and regime change efforts). It's sleazy as hell. And now it's closed.

GOOD DAY

 

What corruption? Money going to a group run by Kristol isn't corruption. Because you don't agree with the causes they support doesn't make it corruption

 

Perhaps you should learn the difference between someone changing their mind and an outright falsehood. The comparison would be Biden saying "I didn't pardon my son" when he had. This trophy wife said Gaza received 50 million for condoms when they hadn't.