Not even condoms are safe as Donald Trump tries to strip money, joy, and general happiness from all living creatures

Freshly-minted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt followed in the footsteps of her predecessors with the embrace of a now time-honored tradition on her very first appearance at the podium.

Like Sean Spicer before her, Leavitt made the bold and very Trumpian decision to lie — or at least massively stretch the truth — on her first day in front of reporters. For Spicer, it was crowd sizes, but Leavitt made the interesting decision to instead zero her lies in on condoms, of all things.

Its an interesting choice to carry on Spicer’s tradition of dishonesty for Donald Trump‘s second term, but it does suit the new administration well. Trump is the king of falsehoods — his entire brand, at this point, is lying. He’ll lie about anything, from his own credentials, plans, and still-forming team to major announcements that affect the American people. If we expect anything but dishonesty from him at this point, that’s on us.

Which also should make it anything but surprising that Leavitt chose the orange man’s way into sharing information. Rather than deliver actual truths to gathered reporters, the youngest Press Secretary in history instead chose to massively inflate and warp the numbers handed down to her in a strange attempt to smear the Biden administration and prop up Trump.

Leavitt claimed, in her Jan. 27 debut, that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency “found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” and instantly sparked confusion. $50 million in condoms? Just in condoms? That’s a truly massive amount, and it sent predictable shockwaves through the public as people processed the claim.

This was only compounded when President Trump added his voice to Leavitt’s, repeating the absurd metric on Wednesday, before fact-checkers came in to examine the claim. That’s when things started to crumble, as respected sources like AP, Al Jazeera, and Reuters pushed back on Trump and Leavitt’s wild assertions.

There is absolutely no evidence to back the crackpot condom claims, numerous sources have found. While it does appear to be true that Trump blocked funding for Gaza programs upheld by humanitarian organization International Medical Corps’ (IMC), the $50 million claim seems to be massively inflated. There are funds intended for contraception, like condoms, included, but not at such a high price point.

That was underlined by both IMC and the president of Refugees International, Jeremy Konyndyk. The former noted that “no U.S. government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms, nor provide family-planning services.” The latter added a hilarious breakdown of what Trump and Leavitt’s claims would equal out to, and he even did the math for us.

“So look – on the “Gaza condoms” thing,” Konyndyk wrote to social media. “USAID procures condoms for around $0.05 apiece. $50m would be ONE BILLION condoms.”

“What’s going is here is NOT a billion condoms for Gaza,” he added. “What’s going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can’t read govt spreadsheets.”

So there you have it. No, the U.S. is not spending tens of millions on funding for condoms in Gaza. While the government does seemingly put plenty of money aside to assist with contraceptives and family planning in nations across the globe — including Palestine — it doesn’t come close to the numbers touted by Leavitt and Trump.