Trump Demands ‘Radical Left’ Reuters Return $9 Million to US Gov — That He Gave Them — After Baseless Elon Musk Claim

mediaite.com ^ | Feb 13, 2025 | David Gilmour

[ransomnote]

President Donald Trump unleashed on “Radical Left Reuters” over a 2018 Pentagon contract to “study large-scale social deception”—a contract awarded during his own administration—and demanded the news agency “GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!”

The brief but furious outburst was pushed out early on Thursday as the president cited the revelation as a finding of his newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump posted on Truth Social:

DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study “large scale social deception.” GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!

Indeed, DOGE’s agency head Elon Musk boosted a post on X claiming the contract showed the “news agency received millions for social engineering.”

Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for “large scale social deception”.

That is literally what it says on the purchase order! They’re a total scam.

Just wow. https://t.co/GGxoVQSwN8

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2025

Musk’s implication was more controversial, that Reuters, a respected global news agency, was somehow running disinformation campaigns on behalf of the Pentagon. That, however, appears to be a misreading, or deliberate misrepresentation, of a publicly available government document.

[fuzzylogic]

lol....yeah, they really can’t help show their bias. I love when I hear “Trump *falsely* claiming...” or such, on topics they have zero information about and have no way to determine “false” vs. “we haven’t bothered looking at the claims”.

Here, it’s “baseless” haha...except for the paper trail!!

[BlackbirdSST]

Reuters, a respected global news agency

On what globe?

[Tired of Taxes]

I think Musk and Trump are missing something here. I wish they would research before talking.

The article says:

...the company awarded the contract was Thomson Reuters Special Services, which operates separately from Reuters News and specializes in fraud detection and risk management—areas directly relevant to countering cyber threats. [It was a] a contract awarded to a risk analytics firm to develop cybersecurity defenses..."

So... the Canadian company that owns Reuters also develops cybersecurity defenses? And the U.S. government gave that foreign company $9 million?

Here's where it gets really interesting.

Per the Wikipedia page:

Thomson Reuters owns and operates the Consolidated Lead Evaluation and Reporting (CLEAR) database, which scrapes personal and identifying data for use in law enforcement, corporate security, and fraud investigations. Per the company's marketing, CLEAR compiles public records, phone records, utility records, social media information, credit history, motor vehicle registration data, and automatic license plate reader scans to create files on its subjects. CLEAR has been the subject of numerous lawsuits alleging invasions of privacy and other violations of civil liberties.

So... a foreign company has all that information? What is going on here, right?

But, it turns out, Thomson Reuters has contracts with ICE. Here's a story about one from Trump's first term:

ICE Has a New $3.4M Contract With Thomson Reuters to Identify ‘Threats’ Against Agency Officials (2019)

And the above article mentions other contracts Thomson Reuters has had with ICE.

So, is the $9 million contract part of their work for ICE?

[zeestephen]

Re: "Trump Demands Radical Left Reuters Return $9 Million to US Gov - That He Gave Them in 2018"

LOL...

Trump and DOD Secretary were not allowed to see the receipts in 2018, either!

[ransomnote]

In the General/Chat forum, on a thread titled Trump Demands ‘Radical Left’ Reuters Return $9 Million to US Gov — That He Gave Them — After Baseless Elon Musk Claim, Teacher317 wrote:

a contract awarded during his own administration

True, but he (and we) have since discovered what a large percentage of his hires were simply Deep State devotees. He CLEARLY is not making that mistake again. Just because it was authorized during Trump I, does not mean that Trump II cannot oppose and fix it. In fact, it gives even more reason and proper moral authority to fix the mistakes of the past that were done during Trump I.

They don't want us to remember they were lawfaring him within an inch of treason charges. We see how they resist his supervision when he isn't under attack 'Seven ways to Sunday' (Schumerism), he could not have prevailed with Congress and the DOJ against him during his first term.

[cgbg]

Before DOGE no President could effectively manage spending.

Those days are over.

[Mr. K]

Many of these agencies have existed for decades.

Just because it happened during his administration doesn’t make it something he approved of.

[Organic Panic]

YAY. We were all in withdrawals from the 4 years of Chomo Biden’s regime without constant refrains of;

Without Evidence
Baseless
Constitutional Crisis
Coup
RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA
THAT’S RACIST
Insurrection

[Tired of Taxes]

So, is the $9 million contract part of their work for ICE?

Answering my own question... The article says it's a DOD contract. Apparently, TRSS has many contracts with DOD and ICE. Musk and Trump jumped the gun on this one.

[Vaduz]

Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for “large scale social deception”.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Sirius Lee]

There’s that word again. “Baseless”. Like the baseless Hillary email server, baseless Wuhan covid source, baseless Hunter laptop...