It turns out that many media sites favoring Democrats have been on the USAID payroll
Wow.
No wonder Democrats are so incensed at Musk and his Musketeers and their efforts to expose the nuts and bolts of who receives USAID money. It turns out that Politico – the site that broke the story of the 51 “intelligence experts” saying the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation – has been on the taxpayer payroll to the tune of many millions. As has the Democrat-favoring AP.
We assumed that websites such as Politico had private benefactors. But USAID? I can’t say the thought ever crossed my mind, skeptical and distrustful as I am of the left.
See this:
It's not just Politico. The Associated Press has been raking in millions of dollars in government money for years.
The AP's bias also makes perfect sense. pic.twitter.com/RrH5JPykvY
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) February 5, 2025
And here’s the scoop on Politico:
? This is the biggest scandal in news media history:
No employee at Politico got paid yesterday. First time ever the company missed a pay period. This is a crisis.
Now we learn Politico — a “news company” — which spent the last 10 years trying to destroy the MAGA Movement was… pic.twitter.com/DwHqEp6gjp
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 5, 2025
Also the NY Times and the BBC. Hey, the more the merrier. Much of this – or at least some – seems to have been in the form of paid premium subscriptions.
Much more here, including this about the legality of what DOGE is doing:
As for Musk and usurpation, attorney and activist Tom Renz points out that the Trump administration planned carefully for this effort. Trump took an existing agency from the Obama era that focused on software development and tasked it instead to do a deep data dive on federal spending. He then made Musk a partner to the US DOGE Service — told you it would be important — to facilitate the effort …
… [T]he real lesson from this is that the executive branch has too much authority over too-huge amounts of discretionary spending. That also means that the executive branch can rescind those spending decisions unilaterally, however. So far, it appears that the USDS has been careful to avoid spending that Congress specifically directs in statute or in budget line items, and instead is taking aim at everything else. That has been the case in every single department that DOGE has touched, especially at USAID, where spending is not only discretionary but has never been effectively checked by executives at State or the White House.
Watching the revelations emerge from the D.O.G.E. team is near unto wandering into the world of the “projectors” in Swift’s Gulliver’sTravels, Part III, chapter 5: on the Academy at Lagado:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829-h.htm#part03
So many projects! So little time!
Is the US Federal government allowed to fund oestensibly news outlets (but really propaganda outlets in favor of leftists) in such ways? Will their be legal repercussions for those who are responsible?
This is incredible news.
It didn’t seem so at the time, but Trump’s 2020 loss may have turned out for the better. I doubt that Trump, if elected in 2020, would have gone after the Democrat-infested Government with the thoroughness he has shown in the past two weeks. Trump’s nature is to be a deal maker. The intractable behavior of the Democrats from 2016 on—but especially from 2020 on—has shown Trump that making deals with the Democrats is a fool’s game.
I have been enjoying the Dem congress critters going ape on TV over some of their slush funds being drained. Millions will die. No…, but maybe the AP and Politico will.
Looking at the details a bit, it seems that the AP has been dipping into these funds for a long time, but it looks like it just started last year for Politico…, unless my thought and conjecture below is true.
The following is a recollection and a conjecture: I was most amazed by one factor in the RussiaGate story. That factor was the idea that some US actors (political or government or both) had enlisted & orchestrated various foreign intelligence people to engage in nefarious activities, that would have been illegal if a US person had performed them. So this is criminality laundering via foreign intel people.
Conjecture: Now we have USAID exposed as a giant corrupt slush fund, funding who knows what? Nominally, they are supposed to deliver funds to foreign people. What if they are funding foreign actors, who might have legitimate credentials, who then turn around and deposit chunks of cash in almost anybody’s pocket. US congress persons, US corporate accounts, entirely criminal people operating in the US? Use your imagination.
This link to Twitchy lays out the series of Renz “tweets” so that a reader can follow the logic. Once again, it seems to be fourth-dimensional chess. You decide.
https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/05/attorney-shuts-down-mediademocrats-claiming-doge-is-illegal-and-unconstitutional-in-kick-butt-thread-n2407883
Some snippets from Claude:
What is the purpose of the USAID?
Why are American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) getting this USAID money?
Newly sworn in AG Pam Bondi needs to look in on these “accountability measures”. Trump is thinking about sending some of the new 90,000 IRS agents to the border, but maybe IRS should also be helping AG Bondi.
Grant Fraud Responsibilities
Bet potential rats are thick as hops in all these American non-governmental organizations (NGOs)…
i think it was a revision of the smith mundt act of 1952, which allowed domestic propaganda, of course there was the mockingbird revelations which were mostly apocryphal,from carl bernstein, this runs parallel, to the journolist, which was the other feedback loop
Apparently the UK public funded BBC also received USAID to the tune of $3.2 million. WTF!? As this onion’s layers are peeled away I wouldn’t be shocked to find most of the global media ecosystem on the take. FJB/FBO.
The trouble is that none of the lib/ everyday democrats will ever see any of this. And if they do, they’ll assume it’s all a lie. I’ve lost total faith in 40% of the population.
DOGE is conducting the long-overdue mother of all audits. There is nothing illegal or unconstitutional about it, Democrat screeching notwithstanding.
@TommyJay:US congress persons
Yes, including some Republicans.
Is it possible to expire from schadenfreude?
Is this true?
No employee at Politico got paid yesterday. First time ever the company missed a pay period.
It implies their entire payroll was coming from the federal government? I hate how cynical I’ve become, but it always seems that in retrospect, I wasn’t cynical enough.
So we are using USAID money in Hungary to support “alternative” media working to defeat Orban and support LBGTQI+ issues and counter Hungary’s passage of anti-pedophilia (child protection) laws.
That’s the kind of power projection the liberal left in the US apparently wants.