MAGA Influencers Push Bizarre Claim That Politico Was Getting Funded By USAID — Here’s the Truth
Screenshot via Politico on Facebook.
MAGA influencers pushed erroneous claims Wednesday that Politico was being “funded” by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), mistaking subscriptions to the outlet’s editorial product for grants.
The false claim surfaced amid moves by Elon Musk to shut the agency down as part of President Donald Trump’s federal cost-cutting plans. Musk’s team shuttered USAID offices over the weekend.
In a post Wednesday afternoon, Right-wing political commentator Kyle Becker posted screengrabs from the government’s spending portal on X, which showed expenses to Politico totalling $8.1 million.
Becker then tied Musk’s closure of USAID offices and halt of funding to a payroll glitch at Politico on Tuesday that meant its staff did not receive their paycheck on time. The “technical error” was later fixed.
From there the claim caught fire, picked up by some big MAGA personalities with colossal online reach who were all too eager to call out bias against the non-partisan outlet that they perceive as a left-leaning rival. Pointing to critical coverage of Trump on the Politico website, some conservative users called “corruption” and claimed the publication was being funneled cash to produce reporting that would “destroy the MAGA Movement.”
Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk and influencer Benny Johnson both shared Becker’s claims, the latter branding the discovery as “the biggest scandal in news media history.” (Johnson, notably, was previously hired by Tenet Media before the organization was accused in a federal indictment of being a Russian-funded propaganda front. He denies knowing about the alleged funds.)
Before long the story was also trending on X headlined: ‘Politico’s USAID Funding Raises Transparency Concerns.’
The story was then boosted by Musk himself, who ripped the expenditure as a “waste of taxpayer money.”
Conservative radio host Dana Loesch called for “protests” outside Politico’s offices and for “every news agency” to be investigated.
The truth is, however, less exciting and less conspiratorial.
Digging in on the claims, Associated Press reporter Byron Tau explained that Politico was not receiving funding from USAID but appeared on the government’s expense sheets because staff were buying subscriptions to Politico’s Pro editorial product. This, he added, was the case across many federal government agencies and departments and was not because Politico was being grant funded.
Politico’s Pro product is widely subscribed to by federal employees and Washington lobbyists because it provides some of the most dedicated coverage of legislation as well as close-up analysis of technical and regulatory work across departments.
Additionally, far from being a ‘gotcha’ moment, the information on these subscriptions is always publicly available and no secret.
Over an hour after his original post Becker added another: “just to be clear” Politico was “getting funds from all sorts of government agencies” for “extremely pricey Politico Pro subscriptions.”
But, with the original post remaining online, garnering tens of thousands of views, by the time he’d issued that clarification, the story had already gone viral.
Mediaite has reached out to Politico for comment.
