Veteran political strategist Roger Stone joined Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec, where the two discussed what Stone described as one of "the most shocking revelations in American history"—the discovery that US federal taxpayer dollars were being funneled into Politico to the tune of $8 million per year. Posobiec compared the scandal to "a move reminiscent of Operation Mockingbird," the Cold War-era CIA program that manipulated the media.
“We’ve discovered this slush fund for the deep state. This is where they were doing all of their deep black ops rather than the CIA,” Stone said. “This is just going to get worse and worse. Thank God, once again, for Elon Musk for putting this information out, but essentially broadcasting it to the world as well as the courage of President Donald Trump just to shut the whole thing down.”
The controversy kicked off after investigative journalist Kyle Becker broke the story on X, revealing that Politico had received $8.1 million over 237 transactions from multiple U.S. government agencies and subagencies.
Among the federal departments involved were the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of the Interior, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Food and Drug Administration, Departmental Offices, Department of Transportation, and the Department of State. A large portion of these funds was allocated for subscriptions to PoliticoPro, a premium news service.
“I think we’re just scratching the surface. We’re going to find more dirty deeds where they were running a political operation to not only buy coverage for their false narrative… Look at their coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop,” said Stone. “It’s not what they said when they cover things, in many cases they don’t cover the news because it’s inconvenient to their narrative.”
The story got an immediate response from the Trump administration. During a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the federal government would no longer be subsidizing subscriptions for Politico.
Tech mogul Elon Musk also weighed in on the controversy, sharing Becker’s findings on X with the comment, "Not for long. This is obviously a huge waste of taxpayer money!" Musk has been aggressively cutting government funding in various sectors, most notably placing USAID under the control of the State Department.
According to records from USSpending.gov, Politico received these funds from 2016 through 2024, with the bulk of the payments occurring between 2020 and 2024. However, projections for fiscal year 2025 indicate a sharp decline following the Trump administration's crackdown on government-funded media subscriptions.
Last week, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo canceling awards and grants for domestic enterprises, though that order was later withdrawn.
Watch the full episode below:
