White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt used her first media briefing to promote a lie about U.S. foreign aid spending.
The falsehood came as Leavitt attempted to justify the widely decried and possibly illegal federal spending freeze ordered by President Donald Trump via the Office of Management and Budget.
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“DOGE and OMB also found that there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” she claimed.
Trump megadonor and Department of Government Efficiency Chair Elon Musk amplified the made-up story on his X account.
“Tip of iceberg,” Musk wrote, later adding, “My guess is that a lot of that money ended up in the pockets [of] Hamas, not actually condoms.”
The attempted attack on the Biden administration is a complete lie. In September, the U.S. Agency for International Development released a report on government spending on contraception and condom shipments made over the last year. None of the $60.8 million was sent to Gaza or anywhere else in the Middle East.
Despite Leavitt’s attempt to scandalize President Joe Biden’s foreign aid spending on contraception, he wasn’t the only one to do it. During his first term in 2019, Trump spent about $40 million on contraceptive aids as part of international relief expenditures.
The aid package authorized by Biden in September was not nearly as salacious as Leavitt’s rhetoric would indicate. According to USAID, that disbursement to Gaza paid for food assistance, nutrition, emergency health care, access to safe drinking water, and emergency shelters, among other items.
But despite the lie—and Leavitt’s inability to inform the public about how vital services like Medicaid would be affected by the spending freeze—corporate media outlets like The New York Times claimed she had made a “steely and unflinching debut” in her new role.
“In First White House Briefing, Youngest Press Secretary Ever Eschews Tradition,” a Wall Street Journal headline similarly gushed.
Leavitt opened her briefing by committing to “telling the truth from this podium every single day.”
But then, of course, she went on to lie.
Considering the track record of Trump’s former press secretaries—Sean Spicer, Sarah Sanders, and Kayleigh McEnany—there will surely be many more lies to come.
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