Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, reacted to a post on social media platform X Wednesday about Politico receiving payments from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Podcast host Benny Johnson wrote Politico was “massively funded” by USAID and that no workers at the news outlet received pay Tuesday. USAID is currently under scrutiny by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over its spending, and all direct-hire workers of the agency will be placed on administrative leave Friday.
“Please tell me this is a joke,” Sen. Lee replied to Johnson. “Please. Someone?”
Johnson also said in his post “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,” the podcast host wrote. The National News Desk (TNND) could not independently verify the claim.
“Now we learn Politico — a ‘news company’ — which spent the last 10 years trying to destroy the MAGA Movement was being massively funded by USAID,” Johnson continued.
USAID purchased $24,000 worth of Politico subscriptions last year and $20,000 worth of them in 2023, according to USAspending.gov, the official source for spending data for the federal government.
Elon Musk, who heads DOGE, said Monday President Donald Trump agreed USAID should be shut down.
“Trump & Elon deleted their funding. Now Politico will go out of business,” Johnson wrote in his post. “The corruption is endless. Good riddance.”
Politico has been awarded a total of $8.2 million from multiple government bodies since 2015, according to USAspending.gov.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday DOGE is working on “canceling” those payments.
“I can confirm that the more than 8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer’s dime will no longer be happening,” she told reporters.
