Given the chaos and controversies surrounding the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” the White House appears predictably eager to defend the initiative and point to its merits. That’s not going especially well.
On the contrary, Donald Trump and his team have begun relying on made-up stuff as part of their case.
One of the first signs of trouble came to the fore last week, when the president, his surrogates and even some congressional Republicans insisted that Elon Musk and his DOGE team had uncovered proof of obvious waste: $50 million in taxpayer money, they claimed, funded condoms in Gaza.
It didn’t take long, however, before reality intervened and the claim was discredited. (After the nonsense was exposed, Trump claimed that it was actually $100 million going toward condoms in Gaza, inflating the lie on a whim.)
Undeterred, as the administration’s campaign against the U.S. Agency for International Development intensified, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that USAID spent $70,000 on a production of a DEI musical in Ireland, $47,000 on a transgender opera in Colombia and $32,000 on a transgender comic book in Peru. She called the expenditures “crap.”
In reality, USAID hadn’t spent any money on any of these things.
But Elon Musk, the White House, GOP elected officials and assorted far-right media personalities appeared especially excited this week about the idea that USAID gave money to Politico, a prominent domestic media outlet. Leavitt, for example, told reporters during a press brief that she’d been “made aware that USAID has funded media outlets like Politico. I can confirm that more than $8 million that has gone to subsidizing subscriptions will no longer be happening.”
Soon after, the president himself amplified the claim online in his usual, understated way. Trump’s message, posted to his social media platform, read in its entirety:








