Washington DC - President Donald Trump is now using a new far-right conspiracy theory to launch a feud against Politico.

During a press briefing at the White House on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt took a question from RSBN reporter Brian Glenn – who is also the boyfriend of MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – regarding a claim spread on social media that Politico and other media outlets have received massive amounts of funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

"I can confirm that the more than [$8 million in] taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico will no longer be happening," Leavitt declared. "The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments."

The false claim has been pushed by a number of conservative commentators on social media, such as Kyle Becker, Benny Johnson, and Charlie Kirk.

Politicians Nancy Mace gets called out on House floor for repeatedly using anti-trans slur

It has since spread like wildfire, with Greene and her fellow MAGA Congresswoman Lauren Boebert also sharing the claim.

By Thursday morning, it appeared to have reached Trump, as he shared a blistering rant to his Truth Social platform, in which he described the money as "'PAYOFF' FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS."

"THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY!" he added. "THE DEMOCRATS CAN'T HIDE FROM THIS ONE. TOO BIG, TOO DIRTY!"

The conspiracy theory comes as Trump and his top advisor, Elon Musk, have aggressively led a radical drive to dismantle large swaths of the US government.

Most recently, the two shut down and fired employees at USAID, an organization Musk has described as "a viper's nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America."

But according to data readily available on USAspending.gov, Politico received around $8.2 million from various government agencies and departments from 2016 to fiscal year 2025, with only $44,000 coming from USAID.

Donald Trump Trump makes bizarre pitch for Musk's DOGE engineers to run air traffic control

The money was not used to boost the outlet but for a subscription to Politico Pro – a premium subscription service that offers politicians and federal employees a number of useful tools, such as legislative tracking, and costs $10,000 per year.

Social media users were quick to point out that Boebert and other members of Congress pay for the service directly from their office.