‘Billions of dollars have been stolen’: Trump slams USAID, other agencies for ‘payoffs’ to ‘fake news media’ like Politico

While government agencies had subscriptions to the Politico Pro service prior to Biden's ascendancy to the White House, those figures skyrocketed once he took office. Officials at multiple agencies under the Biden administration were paying for a service from the left-leaning outlet, which ran positive pieces about Biden and his administration's policies while blasting Trump. This was the outlet that quashed the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the presidential election in 2020 by publishing a letter from 51 current and former intelligence officials claiming that it had all the "hallmarks" of Russian disinformation. Politico also leaked the decision from the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case which overturned Roe v. Wade, turning the question of abortion legality over to the states.

"Looks like billions of dollars have been stollen at USAID," [sic] Trump said in all caps, "and other agencies, much of it going to the fake news media as a 'payoff' for creating good stories about the Democrats. The left wing 'rag,' known as 'Politico,' seems to have received $8,000,000. Did the New York Times receive money???" He asked. "Who else did??? This could be the biggest scandal of them all, perhaps the biggest in history! The Democrats can't hid from this one. Too big, too dirty."

Also on Wednesday, the White House said that the subscriptions to the service would come to an end right away. At the White House press briefing on Wednesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the federal government would no longer be subsidizing these subscriptions for Politico.

"USAID has gotten a lot of attention over the past couple of days, with some of these bizarre things that we've been—taxpayers have been funding. Now it looks like there are couple media outlets that have been dragged into this conversation as far as USAID funding as well. Does the President have a comment on that?" A reporters asked in the briefing room.

"So upon coming out here to the briefing room," Leavitt responded, "I was made aware of the funding from USAID to media outlets, including Politico, who I know has a seat in this room. And I can confirm that the more than $8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers' dime will no longer be happening.

"The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now. Again, this is a whole of government effort to ensure that we are going line-by-line it comes to the federal government's books. And this president and his team are making decisions across the board on 'do these receipts serve the interests American people? Is this a good use of the American taxpayers' money?' If it is not, that funding will no longer be sent abroad and American taxpayers will see significant savings because of that effort."