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US President Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated an eyebrow-raising claim made a day earlier by his new press secretary: that a new clampdown on wasteful government spending had prevented $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms.
“In that process, we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas, $50 million,” Mr Trump said at the White House.
He said Hamas fighters had been using the prophylactics to build bombs, referring to reports that the militants have used condoms as balloons to float incendiary devices into Israel.
But the $50 million claim appears to be false, as the US Agency for International Development does not send condoms to the Middle East.
“It's simply disinformation,” said Dave Harden, a former USAid mission director, who led operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank from 2013 to 2016.
Mr Harden told The National that the agency purposefully avoided reproductive health projects in the territories while he was there because it was too political.
“The notion that we sent $50 million of condoms to Gaza is nonsense,” he said.
Andrew Miller, who was deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs during the Biden administration, also took umbrage to the idea.
“The Biden administration did not spend $50 million on condoms for Gaza. White House either can’t read a simple spend table or it’s lying,” he said on X.
According to USAid's own accounting from 2023, the most recent year numbers are available, it sent no condoms to the Middle East that year.
The claim was first pushed by Karoline Leavitt, the new White House press secretary, on Tuesday as she gave her first briefing. When asked for clarification, she referred The National to a Fox News story.
The condoms were used as an example of why the new administration needed to temporarily pause foreign aid as Trump officials comb through what American taxpayers are paying for overseas as part of the new administration's “America First” agenda.
On Tuesday, State Department press secretary Tammy Bruce sought to clarify examples of “egregious” overseas funding. She did not specify condoms to Gaza, but did list $102 million sent to International Medical Corps in Gaza as an example. It is unclear what that included.
On his first day in office, Mr Trump signed an executive order calling for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance. Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo that the State Department was freezing new funding for nearly all foreign aid programmes.
On Wednesday, he issued an emergency humanitarian waiver extended to “life-saving humanitarian assistance” which the State Department described as “core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance".
The pause and confusion around just what is still allowed has sowed fear and confusion among humanitarian aid organisations, many which depend on US funding.
