As the scandal surrounding the US Agency for International Development (USAID) deepens, an increasing number of organizations and media outlets are becoming entangled—further vindicating Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s stance on shutting down the agency. The latest developments came on Wednesday, when the White House confirmed that the progressive mouthpiece POLITICO had received $8 million in USAID funding. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced during a press conference that the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will move to cancel these payments.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reacted to the news on X, stating: ‘I think the world owes a debt of gratitude to President @realDonaldTrump for uncovering and putting an end to this dark conspiracy.’ He also highlighted the hypocrisy of POLITICO Brussels (the European branch of the outlet), which, in its 2024 ranking of the most influential people in the EU, described Orbán as ‘disruptor of the year’.
Controversy surrounding POLITICO intensified earlier on Wednesday, when reports emerged that the outlet had, for the first time in its history, failed to pay its employees on schedule. The story was broken by American political commentator Benny Johnson on X, who suggested that the issue was directly linked to the Trump administration’s decision to halt payments from USAID. According to Johnson, USAID had provided substantial grants to POLITICO. He also shared a screenshot from usaspending.gov, which showed that POLITICO LLC had received a staggering $8.2 million from various government agencies and departments through 2024.
Meanwhile, further reports have revealed that several major mainstream outlets are also receiving significant payments from the federal government. The New York Times, for instance, has been packing tens of millions per year, with funding increasing substantially after 2021—when Joe Biden took office.
Led by CNN, the mainstream media dismissed the claims as a ‘right-wing conspiracy theory’, insisting that the payments were merely subscriptions for federal government employees and agency staff. A brief review of the contracts does show that most of them are indeed listed as subscription payments—at least, according to the data compiled by the previous Democratic administration.
At this stage of the scandal, however, it is difficult to take at face value anything coming from the same media that, until now, denied the very existence of such payments. And this is not solely about the case of POLITICO—there are numerous instances where these grants are, in reality, multimillion-dollar subsidies for outlets that actively promote progressive narratives and woke propaganda.
A prime example is the BBC, which, through its charity foundation BBC Media Action, received $3.2 million from USAID. In a statement, the British broadcaster admitted that Trump’s halt on US foreign assistance had impacted its budget, as these funds accounted for around 10 per cent of its income last year—coming from a self-proclaimed ‘independent and impartial’ organization. According to the BBC, the funds were used to train local journalists worldwide and to produce programmes broadcast in some of the poorest regions—all while Democrats and progressives outrage over the agency’s shutdown, claiming it will plunge millions into hunger and poverty. But let’s be clear: BBC’s woke propaganda won’t feed the hungry, and life-saving humanitarian assistance is still reaching those who actually need it—just without USAID’s political strings attached.
‘BBC’s woke propaganda won’t feed the hungry, and life-saving humanitarian assistance is still reaching those who actually need it’
Hungary also serves as a striking example of how foreign funding can foster an artificial, self-described ‘independent’ media—one that, in exchange, serves external interests by attempting to destabilize a government unwilling to submit to woke ideology and the globalist agenda. USAID’s interference in Hungary has long been an open secret, with the agency funnelling millions of dollars to the Hungarian opposition and its affiliated media ahead of the 2022 parliamentary elections.
Moreover, in close coordination with the US Embassy in Hungary under David Pressman, USAID distributed grants to outlets that were exclusively critical of the government, ensuring a biased and coordinated media front. The outcome is striking: a well-coordinated media network singing in unison, opposing national sovereignty, traditional values, and pragmatic policy-making, while embracing global governance, radical gender ideology, and woke propaganda. Sound familiar? It should—this template has been stamped all over the Western mainstream media landscape. I mean, just look at these headlines:
Even if these payments are indeed subscriptions, as claimed in the contracts, they already shatter the myth of an ‘independent’ Western mainstream press. At the end of the day, it is US taxpayers’ money that funds these outlets—media organizations that are blatantly biased, ideologically driven, and engaged in relentless smear campaigns against leaders who reject their agenda. We have seen this in action against figures like Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump—perhaps one of the most coordinated media smear campaigns in history orchestrated during the 2024 presidential election campaign, which nearly cost the life of the 47th president of the United States.
‘In a society where everyone is guilty, the only crime is getting caught,’ Hunter S. Thompson, one of the pioneers of New Journalism in the 1970s wrote. In the murky swamps of Washington, USAID committed the only crime: getting caught. Not by Trump or Musk, but by the people. And not just the people of the United States, but citizens of every country where USAID has operated for years, working to undermine democratically elected leaders under the pretext of foreign aid. For this, we should all be, indeed, very grateful to President Trump.
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