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During her first official White House briefing as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt announced that Trump had prevented a "preposterous waste of taxpayer money." Trump’s team, she said, used the president’s pause on foreign aid to thwart a plan in which "there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza."
Leavitt’s Tuesday comments made headlines around the world. And the president himself told an even more dramatic version of the story in a speech on Wednesday, saying that "we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas."
But there are at least five big reasons to be skeptical that the story is true. The White House offered no evidence for the story: Leavitt provided no proof for her claim that there was ever a federal plan to spend $50 million on condoms in Gaza. And when CNN asked Leavitt and her colleagues for any evidence, another White House official instead pointed us to comments from the State Department – comments that, as we’ll discuss below, did not even repeat Leavitt’s claim of a planned $50 million Gaza condom expenditure, let alone prove the claim.
In three previous years under Biden, USAID spent no money on condoms in the entire Middle East: A detailed federal report published last year said USAID did not provide or fund any condoms in the Middle East in the 2021, 2022 and 2023 fiscal years. The report, noted by The Guardian on Tuesday, said the only Middle East contraceptives provided or funded by USAID during that three-year period went to the country of Jordan in fiscal 2023. This was "a small order of injectables and progestin-only contraceptive pills" totaling about $46,000.
Total worldwide USAID condom spending is far less than $50 million: In the 2023 fiscal year, USAID provided or funded a global total of about $7.1 million worth of male condoms and about $1.1 million worth of female condoms, overwhelmingly to countries in Africa, according to the federal report.
A former senior Biden official who worked on Gaza aid issues told CNN that Leavitt’s story about a $50 million condom expenditure for Gaza was "imaginary." The former official said: "It’s a lie, they are making s*** up."
The State Department would not repeat Leavitt’s claim: The White House official pointed to a series of social media posts from State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, who listed specific examples of how Trump’s aid pause had prevented what Bruce called unjustified spending that wouldn’t make the country "safer, stronger, and more prosperous." But Bruce did not mention $50 million for condoms in Gaza.
Experts expressed doubt about Leavitt’s story — or simply called it wrong: Experts on US aid to Gaza and global health aid were baffled by the claim that the US had been planning to spend $50 million on condoms in Gaza.