Condoms for the Taliban and the Great Search For Truth

NBC News photo

Boot camp in the Vietnam era ran on rumors the way Wall Street runs on insider tips—rumors were cheap, abundant, and costly if you took them too seriously. The Drill Instructor opened the festivities by growling, “Believe nothing of what you hear, half of what you see, and you’ll have it half right.”

Which politely said we’d be spending our days in the same ecosystem as Washington’s unbroken news cycle of lies, delusions, and the occasional accidental truth that survived only because somebody forgot to kill it.

So ponder the radical question of the week:  did President Biden’s USAID foot the cost to ship Trojans to the Taliban? 

Back in the Jurassic swamplands of my high school, before cell phones, TikTok, and the soul-sucking sewage pipe called the internet, we still communicated like primitive tribes.  We paid a dime to use phone booths, dialed rotary phones, and passed notes in class like contraband in a prison yard.  Men’s restrooms in gas stations had condom machines that dispensed its product if youthful XY’s with a dollar hoped singing Frank Sinatra Guys and Dolls hit, “luck be a lady tonight” would do it.

Modern Americans I think agree the Taliban are not the kind of folks you’d want as neighbors, or serving on the city council.  These guys think female burger flippers at Wendy’s is Western Satanism.  Women are livestock to their morality laws. 

President Trump’s administration’s challenge first came from DOGE, then Elon Musk directly, then some tag-along GOP Congressmen, and then the WH press secretary.

Trump’s White House suggested President Biden funneled USAID payments to them for contraceptives.  Nothing says “nation-building” better than latex diplomacy.  Right?

But is it true?  Or ever mind the truth.  Is it accurate?

Quoting DOGE, Musk first criticized the condom payments, then he opined more off topic.  Elon claimed that abortion and contraception will lead to the death of civilization.  He is right, but not for the reasons you are thinking.  Another day, another topic.

The Democrat-oriented anti-Trump newspaper machinery cranked up and retaliated.  The contraceptives weren’t for the Taliban but, rather, for Afghan citizens, wrote the Atlantic’s Russell Berman.  Hey, Russell.  The Taliban are Afghan nationals.  Doesn’t that make them citizens? 

Berman’s snark at Trump is called a political DWD.  A distinction without a difference?

Meanwhile, the White House and DOGE claims set off immediate fundraising fireworks.  In a letter dated July 7, 2025, Charlie Kirk used “$15 million to the Taliban to distribute condoms and contraceptives” to raise money for Turning Point USA. 

We can’t fault Kirk too much.  Raising money from the other side’s fabrications is a bipartisan social media political tool.  Kirk is a perfectly competent debater, but the real utility of his bite-sized YouTube Q&A clips anthropology showing of what passes for intellectual life on campus these days (which is none).  And curiosity is politely escorted to the door.

Democrat-slanted organizations like Unlock Aid, Founders Pledge, The Life You Can Save, and GlobalGiving established funds such as the “Foreign Aid Bridge Fund” to support vulnerable communities affected by the USAID cuts, assuming the Taliban are a vulnerable community.  Actually, that’s okay.  If private donations fund these programs, that’s better than taxpayers being bulldozed into supporting the Taliban’s terrorism.

InfoWars’ Alex Jones  raised beaucoup coin claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Connecticut was a hoax.  An enormous verdict for defamation popped his butt blisters and forced him to seek legal help to file bankruptcy. 

Forbes is about as middle of the road publication as there is.  Forbes claims a lack of evidence for DOGE’s claim that millions went for condoms in Gaza.  That would appear to square with common sense.  Gaza Palestinians need food, water and shelter, not contraceptives.  There have been millions of dollars in USAID grants issued to the International Medical Corps (IMC), a group that provides aid to victims of war in Gaza, but the group said they don’t provide money for condoms. 

There are more reasons to be skeptical. 

• The White House offers no concrete proof for the story.  USAID is now part of the State Department.  Trump’s State Department did not confirm Karoline Leavitt’s claim.  One would think the facts would match up between the WH and Foggy Bottom.
• 89% of family planning money through USAID went to Africa.  None to the middle east.
• The Republican echo chamber in Congress, Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., and Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., saw a great soundbite when they heard one.  Each claimed in a CNN interview that USAID spent $15 million on condoms for the Taliban.
• The only Middle Eastern contraceptives the Biden-era USAID funded went to Jordan, one of our allies in that area, a whopping $46,000.  Unless Taliban fighters are now vacationing in Amman and hitting up free clinics, there’s no evidence any condom money ended up in the hands of our bearded extremists friends. 
• the Taliban control everything in Afghanistan.  Where or to whom would USAID send the condom money?

Who knows the truth.  Don’t assume what is on X or TikTok is correct.  While Trump’s team is giving out bad stuff, so did Biden’s.  And Obama’s.  And all of the previous ones back to my hero, Calvin Coolidge.  Old “Silent Cal” learned what other President’s haven’t – your political opponents have a difficult time raising funds to criticize silence.

Musk was more straightforward and gave the truest statement of all.   Giving money to foreigners to buy condoms doesn’t mean that’s what the money buys.  $15 million may in fact have gone to the Middle East by USAID contracts.  But for other things. 

We figure if the money to the Taliban actually bought rubbers, they slipped them over the barrels of their AK-47s to keep out the rain.