White House says it will cancel $8M in Politico subscriptions

This is all just the dumbest knee jerk stuff.

Politico didn’t make payroll a couple of days ago for some technical reason or another. But because the timing coincided with Musk and his minions invading USAID conspiracy theories immediately popped up: Politico is bankrolled by USAID! It’s a psyop!

Of course the reality is incredibly boring. Politico sells PoliticoPro[1], “public affairs software”. The government (not USAID) was paying for that. Was it a good purchase? Are we getting value for money for it? No clue, but I’d bet the people that terminated the subscriptions don’t have a clue either. The hoarde demanded immediate action so action was taken.

My bet is they’ll quietly resubscribe in a few months.

[1] https://www.politicopro.com/

*Politico Pro, specifically: https://www.politicopro.com/pro-features/stakeholder-managem...

So lobbyists, consultants, and NGOs can still get access to the PR tool - just not the policymakers themselves.

Already debunked

> USAID paid $44K to Politico, not over $8M as White House claimed. It was for subscriptions

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42977622

I think $8M is for a little more than “subscriptions”.

Without seeing the value delivered for the service, it seems kind of pricey at first blush unless it was paying for multiple individual analysts for N accounts to give them credible, researched expertise as a service. Maybe they were paying for a zillion individual subscriptions? If so, perhaps a site license for $1-2 million would be more reasonable. Don't just throw things a way because the number is higher than X.

Didn’t the CEO of the parent company of Politico recently call on all the executives to pray for president Trump?

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/politico...

Plenty of gov related media. FCW, Government Executive, Aviation Leak. If there's a dept budget for subs either cut it or not. Via Congress.

Congress decides on budgets in an democracy. But not in an idiocracy.

btw, both d and r teams are idiotic.