While in the Oval Office signing an executive order to develop a sovereign wealth fund which could potentially buy the Chinese-owned app TikTok, President Donald Trump was asked by a journalist, “Why is it important for Elon Musk to have access to the payments systems at Treasury?”
Trump answered about Musk: “Well, he’s got access only to letting people go that he thinks are no good, if we agree with him, and it’s only if we agree with him.”
REPORTER: Why is it important for Elon Musk to have access to the payments systems at Treasury?
TRUMP: Well, he’s got access only to letting people go that he thinks are no good, and it’s only if we agree with him pic.twitter.com/QFxGStrKTk
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 3, 2025
Trump pivoted to Musk’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Monday, and said: “Some of the numbers are horrible, what he’s found. A hundred, think of it, a hundred million dollars on condoms to Hamas. Condoms to Hamas.”
Last week White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference that $50 million of USAID fund was earmarked for condoms in Gaza.
For years, USAID has provided millions of dollars worth of condoms and other contraceptives to foreign countries to help prevent the spread of AIDS and HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and to assist with family planning. (Note: Musk, a father of 12 children, has said, “people need to be having more babies” because of his concerns about a declining birth rate.)
USA Today cited a USAID report — no longer available online because the USAID website has been shut down — that showed that the agency had spent $61 million in 2023 to provide condoms and other contraceptives to other countries. Of that $61 million, $8 million went for the purchase of condoms but “not a cent was used to send condoms to Gaza.” (Note: About 93 percent of the total volume of male condoms procured was for the Africa region.)
The repetition of the “condoms for Gaza” story delivered by the administration without evidence — part of what Steve Bannon calls the “flood the zone” strategy — is reminiscent of the narrative spun by Trump and JD Vance while campaigning in the fall, when both candidates repeatedly told a debunked story about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating domestic cats and dogs.
Trump even brought up the “eating the pets” story at his presidential debate with Kamala Harris. The pets story, like the assertion that $100 million in condoms was headed to Gaza, was presented without evidence and retold even after it was debunked by local authorities including the Mayor of Springfield and the Governor of Ohio, both Republicans. (Vance was at the time a U.S. Senator representing Ohio.)
The Republican mayor of Springfield to me on Vance and Trump: https://t.co/tXv5CByqJs pic.twitter.com/BkhhLkselR
— Adam Wren (@adamwren) September 15, 2024
Vance defended repeating the eating pets story by saying: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Like the pets story, the condoms story is an example of Trump and Vance using an untrue story purposely to illustrate a larger point they are trying to make.
Vance claims he and Trump have to “create stories” about migrants eating cats and dogs “so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.”
There is then some awkward dead air as Bash tries to highlight the absurdity of what he just said pic.twitter.com/IN26ZGYsvE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 15, 2024
Why Musk is so determined to target USAID — and why he’s using brute force and fictitious stories to do it — is hard to understand based purely on his promise to cut costs from his perch at DOGE. USAID’s share of American spending is approximately $40 billion, a sliver in the pie chart of the annual $6 trillion federal outlay, small enough to be a rounding error.
Indeed, if Musk were on a purely cost-cutting mission — rather than an ideological ‘America First’ hunt — no efficiency consultant worth her MBA would place the hobbling of USAID near the top of the to-do list.
There is fatter fruit to pluck from the federal spending tree by just fixing errors in the system at large, since as the New York Times reports, “the Government Accountability Office estimated in a report that the government made $236 billion in improper payments — three-quarters of which were overpayments — across 71 federal programs during the 2023 fiscal year.”
USAID was created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, as Kennedy — recognizing the “soft power” accrued through the distribution of humanitarian foreign aid — sought alternative tools, beyond the State Department, to counter Soviet influence around the globe.
A similar U.S. rivalry exists today with China, whose foreign investments in infrastructure and aid have strengthened its sphere of influence at a cost to the U.S. power.
While the Trump administration and Musk spread the “condoms for Gaza” narrative that mocks and mischaracterizes USAID’s mission and its work with birth control and disease prevention in developing nations, the deliberate distraction deflects attention from the fact that the shutdown of USAID eliminates the world’s largest provider of food assistance.