WASHINGTON — US Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk on Tuesday appeared to walk back the Trump administration’s claim that the previous administration allocated $50 million in condoms for Gaza.
The figure was first cited by the White House to justify a sweeping freeze on foreign aid that the Trump administration imposed, though the claim was swiftly dismissed as a “feverish dream” by a former senior Biden administration official.
While the tech mogul carried his son on his shoulders and stood next to US President Donald Trump, who was signing executive orders in the Oval Office, a reporter noted reporting revealing that DOGE’s condom claim mistook the Gaza Strip for a province in Mozambique that received contraceptives from the US Agency for International Development in order to combat AIDS.
“Some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected,” Musk replied. “Nobody is going to bat 1,000. We will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”
“I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million dollars worth of condoms anywhere… I’m not sure that’s something Americans would be really excited about. That really is an enormous number of condoms,” he continued.
“If it were to Mozambique instead of Gaza, that’s not as bad, but still… why are we doing that?” Musk asked.
Trump, who said last week that Musk discovered that “$100 million dollars” was earmarked by the Biden’s administration for “condoms to Hamas,” did not similarly retract his claim.
Illustrative. Masked Palestinian men prepare inflated latex condoms loaded with flammable material to be flown toward Israel, at the Israel-Gaza border in al-Bureij, central Gaza Strip on June 14, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMS)
Trump had also charged that the condoms were being used by Hamas “as a method of making bombs,” apparently referring to the inflated latex condoms that Palestinians in Gaza used to launch incendiary devices and explosives at southern Israel during his first term in office.
Agencies contributed to this report.
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