United States President Donald Trump has boasted that his administration had stopped $50m in bomb-making condoms from being sent to Gaza.
Trump provided no evidence for his claims – that condoms were being sent to Gaza or that Hamas is using contraceptives to make bombs – and left many people wondering what the US president was talking about.
But perhaps there is an explanation. A bizarre one.
Here’s what you need to know about Trump’s claim that the US was sending condoms to Hamas until he stopped the flow:
What exactly does Trump think happened?
Trump made the contraceptive claim while listing his administration’s accomplishments since coming into office.
“We identified and stopped $50m being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas,” Trump said on Wednesday. “They used them as a method of making bombs. How about that?”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, made a similar claim on Tuesday during her debut news briefing. She stated that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) “found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.”
She called the alleged aid “a preposterous waste of taxpayer money”.
Jesse Watters, host of a conservative-leaning talk show on Fox News, said Hamas was using the nonexistent US shipments to make “condom bombs”, floating explosives-laden balloons into Israel. Did he share any evidence to back up that bomb-astic claim? No.
Why did the White House make the condoms claim?
Trump appears to have made the accusation to frame Gaza as an example of wasteful US foreign aid spending. His administration has justified its suspension of nearly all foreign aid by highlighting examples of “egregious funding”, such as contraception and reproductive healthcare programmes.
The administration says it is conducting a review to ensure that the tens of billions of dollars of US foreign assistance is aligned with Trump’s “America first” foreign policy and not a waste of taxpayer money.
The US is by far the largest aid donor globally. In fiscal year 2023, it disbursed $72bn of assistance worldwide on everything from women’s health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/AIDS treatments, energy security and anticorruption work.
Soon after returning to office for a second term on January 20, Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance to make sure that the aid conforms with the policies of his administration, which opposes abortion, transgender rights and diversity programmes.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a memo that the US was freezing nearly all aid disbursement except for emergency food assistance and military aid to Egypt and Israel.
How many condoms can you buy with $50m?
Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) COVID-19 assistance portfolio for President Joe Biden’s administration, refuted Trump’s and Leavitt’s claims as unrealistic.
“USAID procures condoms for around $0.05 apiece,” he wrote on Wednesday on X. “$50m would be ONE BILLION condoms. What’s going on here is NOT a billion condoms for Gaza. What’s going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can’t read govt spreadsheets.”
So look – on the “Gaza condoms” thing.
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.
What’s going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can’t read govt spreadsheets.
— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) January 29, 2025
Was the US really going to send $50m in condoms to Gaza?
There is no publicly available evidence of plans for millions of taxpayer dollars to be spent on funding condoms in Gaza, and a Department of State official did not respond to an evidence request from the Reuters news agency.
However, there is a lot of evidence that appears to refute Trump’s claim.
In a statement on Wednesday, the International Medical Corps (IMC), an organisation that received US money to provide medical care in Gaza, detailed its work in the enclave. It said: “No US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms, nor provide family-planning services.”
Its statement added that IMC has received more than $68m from USAID since October 7, 2023, which has been used to operate two large field hospitals in Gaza, including for surgical care, malnutrition treatment, and emergency maternal and newborn care.
No publicly available reports by DOGE or OMB reflect a plan to spend $100m on the IMC’s operations in Gaza.
Reports for fiscal years 2007 through 2023 on contraceptives and condoms shipped by USAID to the rest of the world also do not show any record of condoms shipped to Gaza.
A former deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East, Dana Stroul, said in an X post on Wednesday that USAID did not spend money on Gaza in fiscal year 2023.
An April USAID report shows that the US delivered $60.8m in contraceptives and condoms to four regions – the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean – in the previous fiscal year.
The Middle East received just $45,681 while Africa received more than $54m, or 89 percent, of the contraceptives in fiscal year 2023.
The report added that the $45,681 was made entirely to Jordan and included oral contraceptives and injectable contraceptives but did not include condoms.
USAID reports also show deliveries to the Middle East in fiscal years 2019, 2013, 2012, 2009, 2008 and 2007, none of which mention any deliveries to Gaza.
Under the Trump administration, USAID delivered $1.1m to the Middle East in fiscal year 2019. All commodities went to Yemen, including male and female condoms and multiple types of contraceptives.
Was Trump thinking of a different Gaza?
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) funds organisations worldwide that carry out health-related projects, including reproductive health.
Could it be that Trump and his administration were referring to a different Gaza? After all, there are more than a dozen places in the world named Gaza, including two communities in the United States.
For the moment, why Trump made the claim and what evidence he has is unknown.
But it is interesting to note that according to the HHS grants database, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in Mozambique has received more than $83m in funding since 2021.
The money was assigned to reproductive health projects in two of the country’s provinces: Inhambane and Gaza.
This funding is expected to continue until September 2026, according to the grant details.
It is unclear whether Mozambique has lost funding because of any confusion over its Gaza province.
The post Is the US sending $50m in condoms to Gaza as Trump claims? appeared first on Al Jazeera.
