Looking for something else entirely, I noticed that USAID was trending on the Platform Formerly Known as Twitter. Wondering if perhaps a judge had ruled that the Trump administration’s unilateral shuttering of a Congressionally-funded agency was unlawful, I clicked through only to find people claiming (among other things) that Jimmy Kimmel was suspended, not because President Trump’s FCC chair had threatened retaliation but because the erstwhile development agency had stopped funneling huge amounts of cash to keep the show on the air.
Apparently, not only was USAID funding Kimmel but also Stephen Colbert, Howard Stern, Joy Reid, and The View. And POLITICO. And, naturally, George Soros, Black Lives Matter, and Antifa. They even paid for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding!
Big news if true.
You’ll be shocked to learn that none of these things are true. (Well, except for a few thousand in subscription fees to POLITICO.)
Some of these claims have been floating around since February and have been debunked. See, for example,
- BBC, “False video claims Hollywood stars were paid by USAID to visit Ukraine”
- Snopes, “Fact Check: USAID paid $44K to Politico, not over $8M as White House claimed. It was for subscriptions“
- AP, “Claims about USAID funding are spreading online. Many are not based on facts“
I don’t know where the notion that USAID was funding various talk shows came from, but it’s so absurdly ridiculous that it defies comprehension that anyone would possibly believe it. Indeed, the same people—rightly—point to the low ratings of these shows. Why would even a sinister leftist arm of the Deep State invest in targeting a handful of people who stay up late to watch?
Of course, these people also believe that Howard Stern has been canceled based on a rumor-sourced report in a British tabloid that has been debunked. And that “The View” has been canceled, when it just took its standard summer hiatus and is back on the air.
