Politico fact v. fiction
Here's another timely example of unreality: The assertion that MAGA's current enemy #1 USAID secretly bankrolled Politico.
X users' feeds are absolutely bursting with wild falsehoods about government spending right now. (Maybe that's just how Musk likes it?) Timothy B. Lee pointed out that "the data on usaspending.gov has been publicly available for years," and Eric Levitz commented that "the GAO identified $233 billion of fraud in 2024," so "we don't need to let a billionaire ignore federal law to do government oversight."
But the unreality is winning. Yesterday, after a right-wing conspiracy theory took root about USAID giving millions of dollars to Politico, Karoline Leavitt said DOGE is "working on canceling" $8 million worth of Politico subscriptions. In reality, that sum represented all the payments for Politico Pro subscriptions from all federal agencies, including USAID, for many years.
"There's no $8 million to cancel," Politico reporter Josh Gerstein pointed out. "This is like saying you're going to cancel your New York Times subscription from 2016 or your car payment from 2018. It's idiotic on its face."
Last night Politico leaders Goli Sheikholeslami and John Harris sent around a memo trying to clean up the misinfo (and defending the value of its pro subscription service), but this noise may have a real bottom line impact on its business.
And it's not just Politico. This morning, in his harshest attack against the media since retaking office, he posted in all caps that it "LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A 'PAYOFF' FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS." He wondered aloud if CBS and The New York Times benefited.
Thus a new conspiracy theory is born – one based on lies and grievances – and one that's sure to have a long MAGA media lifespan. Journalists who try to explain it's nonsense come across like they're defending a corrupt business model. "This seems to be a new vector of attacking the media, saying they're only calling stuff out to protect income," Techdirt's Mike Masnick wrote overnight.
This unreality dynamic is a continual challenge for fact-checkers and the wider media. Journalists don't have to spend all day debunking Trump's stuff, but we do have to recognize that it's consuming the feeds of Trump fans. For MAGA media consumers who want to feel like they're "winning" by saving taxpayer dollars, no matter how inconsequential the amount, boring reality is no match for Trump's unreality.
From:
reliablesources@newsletters.cnn.com
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