Trump's Team Targets USAID With False Claims – DW

Founded to provide foreign aid and support international development, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) operated in more than 100 countries and had a budget of $50 billion in 2023, according to the most recent figures.

But not even a month into his second term in the White House, Donald Trump now plans to cut its workforce from 10,000 employees to fewer than 300.

The overhaul has been accompanied by false claims about an organization Trump’s team believes has been wasting US taxpayers’ money.

DW Fact Check has debunked some of these claims.

Hollywood stars paid by USAID?

Claim: USAID sponsored celebrity trips to Ukraine, including visits by Hollywood stars Ben Stiller and Angelina Jolie, according to several social media posts, including this video that was reposted by X owner Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr., the son of the US president.

DW fact check: False

The video bears the logo of E! News, an entertainment site owned by NBC Universal. In the video, a female voice explains the goal of those USAID-funded trips was to increase the popularity of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, especially in the US.

An E! News spokesperson, however, told French news agency AFP that the video is not authentic and did not originate from them.

And several of the stars involved have denied having received money from USAID. Stiller, for instance, said on his X account he “completely self-funded” his trip to Ukraine and said there was “no funding from USAID.”

A possible hint as to where the false claim originated is this social media post. It’s a screenshot of a site called Pravda, which published a story (archived link here) about the celebrities’ visits.

The site has published several other unfounded claims about USAID, most of them painting the US agency in a negative light and linking its overhaul to forthcoming problems for Ukraine.

For instance, it writes about how “Ukraine’s state system could collapse without money from USAID.”

Pravda has been described as a network of Russian disinformation.

Pravda has been described as a network of Russian disinformation sites publishing stories in several languages. The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) has saidthe Pravda network publishes mostly propaganda and disinformation.

According to EDMO, “all Pravda websites use the same kind of sources, in particular: Russian State-owned or controlled media, such as Tass, RIA, Lenta, Tsargrad and so on.”

The source in the article about celebrity visits to Ukraine was the state-controlled TV station Tsargrad.

$50-million worth of condoms for Gaza?

Not only has USAID directly been a target of mis- and disinformation. Foreign aid in general is being used to spread false claims, as can be seen in this viral example, in which Trump claimed the US was sending shipments of condoms worth $50 million (€48.3 million) to Gaza.

Claim: “We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas, 50 million,” Trump said(starts at 05:40).

Earlier, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made a similar claim: “… about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza. That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.” (watch from 24:12))

Both Trump and his press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed millions of dollars worth of condoms were being sent to Gaza.Image: Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo/picture alliance

DW fact check: False

Trump and his spokesperson appeared to be referring to a $102 million USAID grant to the International Medical Corps (IMC), an NGO providing medical and trauma services in Gaza. Last week, a State Department spokesperson tweetedthat the agency had “prevented $102 million in unjustified funding to a contractor in Gaza, including money for contraception” thanks to a pause in foreign assistance.

USAID works closely with IMC, which issued a press release after the controversy. It stated that since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israel, it had received over $68 million from USAID to support its operations in Gazabut

clarifiedthat “no US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms, nor to provide family-planning services.”

There is no evidence that the US ever sent $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza. The US foreign aid records show no such expenditure. It provides contraceptives, including condoms, worldwide, but according to USAID’s report (page 9), its total spending in 2023 was a little over $60 million.

Jordan was the only Middle Eastern country to receive aid from this program in 2023, receiving $45,680 worth of injectable and progestin-only contraceptive pills (pages 21, 44). Gaza was not mentioned.

A social media post falsely claimed USAID had paid Jeffrey Epstein money in 2023

Did USAID pay sex offender Jeffrey Epstein?

Claim: Posts like thisone on X suggest USAID was paying American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The post shows a screenshot of a document with payments for Epstein under the name Kaiser Foundation health plan.

DW Fact check: False

The Epstein the document is referring to is not the American financier, but a namesake (Jeff Epstein) who was a high-ranking representative at the health care company mentioned in the document (Kaiser Foundation Hospitals).

Here and here are sites showing Epstein’s work at Kaiser.

Beyond this, the document that allegedly shows the payments refers to the tax year 2023 as the year in which Epstein received his money.

The convicted sex offender, however, died in 2019.

What role is USAID playing globally?

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Edited by: Rachel Baig