The Trump administration has accepted a $130 million donation from an anonymous source in order to pay military service members during the ongoing government shutdown.
President Donald Trump announced the donation on Thursday, saying that “a friend” of his had made the donation. The president did not identify the donor, saying “he doesn’t really want the recognition.”
The Defense Department confirmed the donation to the Daily Beast, with chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell explaining, “The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of Service members’ salaries and benefits.”
He noted that the donation was accepted under the Pentagon’s “general gift acceptance authority,” and added, “We are grateful for this donor’s assistance after Democrats opted to withhold pay from troops.”
Democrats were quick to criticize the payment, which is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the salaries of 1.3 million active service members, working out to roughly $100 per person.
Democratic Senator Chris Coons, top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations panel, expressed concerns about using anything other than public funds to pay service members.
“Using anonymous donations to fund our military raises troubling questions of whether our own troops are at risk of literally being bought and paid for by foreign powers,” he said in a statement.
The donation isn’t the only unorthodox source of income for the military during the ongoing shutdown.
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that his government had initiated a deal to ensure U.S. troops stationed in Germany remain paid during the shutdown.
“The federal government will initiate an unscheduled expenditure to ensure that October salaries are paid on time,” a government spokesperson said.
Republicans have been quick to blame the Democrats for both the lack of pay for active duty troops and the shutdown more broadly, despite House Republicans blocking a Democrat-backed bill to ensure service members were paid during the shutdown earlier this month.
In a Truth Social post published on Oct. 11, the president ordered Hegseth to “use all available funds” to ensure soldiers would be paid by the 15th.
“Chuck Schumer recently said, ‘Every day gets better’ during their Radical Left Shutdown. I DISAGREE! If nothing is done, because of ‘Leader’ Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, our Brave Troops will miss the paychecks they are rightfully due on October 15th,” Trump wrote.
“That is why I am using my authority, as Commander in Chief, to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th. We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS.”
While the shutdown was officially caused by Republicans and Democrats in Congress failing to agree on the federal budget, at least one Democrat suspects there is something more sinister at play.
California congressman Ro Khanna told The Daily Beast Podcast that he believes the shutdown is because Republicans are avoiding the question of releasing the Epstein files.
“Every time [Republicans] take these extraordinary measures, like shutting down the Congress—not even having votes out of fear of releasing these files—it adds to the skepticism and anger of the American public who think that there’s something rotten there,” Khanna said.
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