Facts -Control: $ 50 million for condoms in Gaza? Five major reasons to be skeptical Trump’s story is true

Washington
Cnn
–

During his first official briefing in the White House as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt announced that Trump had prevented an “inappropriate waste of taxpayer money.” Trump’s team, she saidspent the president’s break on foreign assistance to avert a plan where “there was about to be $ 50 million taxpayers dollars that went out the door to finance condoms in Gaza.”

Leavitt’s Tuesday comments made headlines around the world. And the president even told an even more dramatic version of the story in a speech on Wednesday and said “we identified and stopped $ 50 million and was sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.”

But there are at least five major reasons to be skeptical that the story is true.

The White House offered no evidence of the story: Leavitt provided no evidence of her claim that there was ever a federal plan to spend $ 50 million on condoms in Gaza. And when CNN asked Leavitt and her colleagues of evidence, another official instead of comments from the state of the state – comments, as we will discuss below, did not even repeat Leavitt’s claim of a planned $ 50 million Gaza condoms expenses, so much less to prove to prove the claim.

In three earlier years during Biden used USAID no money on condoms in the whole Middle East: A detailed Federal Report published last year said that USAID did not deliver or funded any Condoms in the Middle East In fiscal years 2021, 2022 and 2023.

The report, noted By The Guardian Tuesday said the only Middle East Prevention delivered or funded by USAID over the three-year period went to the country Jordan in the financial year 2023. This was “a small order with injection and progestin-only contraception of pills”, that gathered $ 46,000.

Total worldwide USAID condom costs are far less than $ 50 million: In the financial year 2023, USAID provided a global sum of approx. 7.1 million dollars of male condoms and approx. 1.1 million dollars female condoms, overwhelming to countries in Africa, according to the federal report.

In other words, Leavitt claimed essentially Tuesday that Biden -Administration had decided to give more than six times 2023 worldwide value of condoms to a single small territory that has about 2.1 million people, and it is in a region that usually do not receive condoms from the United States.

A former senior Biden -Officer who worked with Gaza Aid question, CNN told Leavitt’s story of a $ 50 million condomed expenses for Gaza was “imaginary.” The former official said, “It’s a lie, they make up the s ***.”

The Ministry of State would not repeat Leavitt’s claim: The White House official pointed to a number of positions on social media from spokesman for the Tammy Bruce State Department, who stated specific examples of how Trump’s auxiliary break had prevented what Bruce called unjustified expenses that would not make the country “safer, stronger and more flowering. ”

But Bruce did not mention $ 50 million for condoms in Gaza.

Instead, Bruce VAG was with how much condom costs were allegedly stopped. She wrote: “Example 1: Condoms. Prevented $ 102 million in unjustified funding to a Gaza contractor, including money for birth control. “She did not specify how much of the $ 102 million in funding intended for birth control, so much less to condoms in particular.

In an e-mail to journalists earlier Tuesday, Bruce said the device to get $ 102 million is the International Medical Corps-One US-Based Organization that Driver two Field Hospitals in Gaza.

In a statement to CNN on Wednesday, International Medical Corps said it has received about $ 68 million from the US Agency for International Development to Gaza operations since October 7, 2023, the day of Hamas’ major attack on Israel. While International Medical Corps has publicly discussed Its reproductive and sexual health services in Gaza, among various other services from cardiology to orthopedia, the organization said in Wednesday’s statement that “no US government financing was used to acquire or distribute condoms.”

The organization said the US funding has paid for the two hospitals’ life -saving medical treatment for approx. 33,000 civilians a month. Trump’s freezing, the organization said, stopping US funding for hospital services such as performing about 30 life -saving operations a day, delivering about 20 babies a day, running an emergency room that receives up to 200 patients a day, and drives one of Gaza’s only neonatal Intensive care devices and only stabilization centers for seriously malnourished children.

“If the stop-work order remains in place, we will not be able to maintain these activities beyond the next week or so,” the organization said.

An official in the State Department issued a further statement to CNN on Wednesday who claimed that the funding Trump had stopped from going to International Medical Corps “included” funds for family planning, emergency pone -pitching agents and sexually transmitted infections. Like Bruce’s Tuesday Social Media Posts and E -Mail to journalists, this Wednesday did not repeat Leavitt’s claim that there were $ 50 million in particular in planned funding for condoms; It gave no dollar numbers for condoms at all.

Experts expressed doubts about Leavitt’s story – or simply called it wrong: Experts on US Aid to Gaza and Global Health Support were confused by the claim that the United States had planned to spend $ 50 million on condoms in Gaza.

“We have asked around and no one is sure what this is referring to,” said Steve Fake, a spokesman for Angera, a non -profit who has worked with USAID on a Five-year-old, $ 50 million health initiative in Gaza.

Fake said this Angera program has “certainly no purchase of condoms” and added: “Our entire program is $ 50 (millions) and represents a significant part of the total US help with Gaza.”

Matthew KavanaghDirector of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Policy and Politics said that after doing something by digging in Leavitt’s claim, ”it seems that there was no $ 50 million in condoms going to Gaza. That is, at best, a miscarriage. ”

And Jeremy KonndykPresident of the Advocacy Organization Refugees International and a USAID -official under the bite and Obama administrations said: “This is total waste. Either fully invented, or someone who doesn’t know how to read a spreadsheet. ”

This story has been updated with further details.