I pick up only peripherally on the crazy stuff Trump yammers, i.e., reading about it on BlueSky. So I did see something about Trump’s claim that USAid wastes $millions (or maybe $billions) on handing out condoms to Hamas, in Gaza.
Yes, yes. He said that. He’s like a concave volcano, spewing toxins whenever he opens his maw.
I just read the New York Times’s valiant effort to fact check this singular dimwit who never emits a fact. After several paragraphs laying out for what excellent purposes USAid does distribute funds and for what purposes it does not distribute funds, I came upon this paragraph. I could almost hear Linda Qiu’s* deep, deep sigh and see her facial expression as she wrote it:
The New York Times and other news organizations have been unable to find evidence supporting assertions of $50 million or $100 million in funding for condoms in the Gaza Strip. (There do appear to be tens of millions of dollars in federal grants awarded to other charities for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and H.I.V. in Gaza, a province of Mozambique.)
*Linda Qiu is the NYT’s V(aliant) F(act) C(hecker).