Beware the Internet Mob—on USAID and Everything Else

Last week, I dipped back into X just to see what I’d been missing on paternity leave. A post from Benny Johnson, a conservative activist with 3.4 million followers, caught my eye. Apparently, he had discovered “the biggest scandal in news media history.”

According to Johnson there was a “crisis” at Politico, the Washington-based news site: It was unable to meet payroll because it had been “massively funded” by USAID, but DOGE had just “deleted” the cash. “Now Politico will go out of business,” Johnson wrote. “The corruption is endless. Good riddance.”