White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the administration was working to end millions of dollars of taxpayer money that is being sent to Politico in the form of subscriptions.
Critics tied the scandal surrounding the United States Agency for International Development with the news outlet after Politico failed to pay workers at the same time that the administration was shutting down USAID payments.
‘Do these receipts serve the interests of the American people? Is this a good use of American taxpayers’ money?’
Politico said in an internal email to employees that the payment problem was due to a technical error, but online sleuths were able to discover that the outlet was receiving millions of dollars from the government in the form of pricey subscriptions.
Leavitt said those subscription payments would be completely ending.
“Upon coming out here to the briefing room, I was made aware of the funding from USAID to media outlets, including Politico, who I know has a seat in this room,” said Leavitt.
“And I can confirm that the more than $8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime will no longer be happening,” she continued. “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”
Leavitt was referring to the Department of Government Efficiency headed up by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
“Again, this is a whole-of-government effort to ensure that we are going line by line when it comes to the federal government’s books. And this president and his team are making decisions across the board on, do these receipts serve the interests of the American people? Is this a good use of American taxpayers’ money?” she continued.
“If it is not, that funding will no longer be sent abroad and American taxpayers will see significant savings because of that effort,” Leavitt added.
Critics pushed back on the claims of improper funding by pointing out that the expenditure was from many different government agencies, and they had also paid for subscriptions for the New York Times as well as the Wall Street Journal.
Politico said a glitch caused the missed payments, and it was fixed by the end of the day.
Leavitt’s comments can be viewed on YouTube.
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