Posting it for bid would have given dozens of USAID funded groups time to flood the airwaves with even more lies before this commercial even hit the splicing desk.
ProPublica breathlessly reports like this is the first time this has happened. The ad must have been too effective for their taste.
EC
You could make that argument for a lot of other government contracts, but does it sit well with you that it was Noem’s buddies who cashed in on this job?
it seems to me that the honorable way to award the work (if we accept your premise that this had to be handled clandestinely) would have been to have sought a seasoned contractor versus a start-up financially linked to the awarding secretary.