Here’s a story about being wrong. Not just regular wrong — we’re all wrong sometimes! — but spectacularly, publicly, “I’m going to double down again and again and again on this obviously false thing even after being corrected” wrong.
This week, Elon Musk stood in the Oval Office at the White House and was finally challenged about one of the Musk/Trump administration’s more creative (i.e., made up) claims: that the US was sending $50 million worth of condoms to Hamas in Gaza. (Sometimes it was $100 million. The details are flexible when you’re making things up.)
When confronted with the claim that the USAID grant in question was for a different Gaza, one in Mozambique, for anti-HIV and anti-TB programs rather than condoms, Musk responded by admitting that maybe “some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected.”
Now, for many people, this would be the moment to say “Ah yes, my mistake about that whole condom thing, I will try not to let that happen again.” But no! Musk immediately went on to insist that the $50 million was still too much for condoms. (It was not for condoms.) The funding from the US to Mozambique was actually a grant to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which has told reporters that none of it went to condoms.
BBC Verify contacted the aid agency that granted the funding – the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) – who told us that no money has been used to...
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