Elon Musk, chief of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), appears to have walked back from previous claims by the Donald Trump administration that the Biden government allocated condoms worth $50 million to Gaza. The White House previously highlighted the $50 million figure while defending the freezing of foreign aid by Trump. But on Tuesday (Feb 11) in the Oval Office a reporter alleged that the claims made by Musk's DOGE of the condoms allocation were false.

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The reporter said the condoms were sent to a province in Mozambique from the US for International Development in order to combat AIDS, and the Trump administration mistook the location for Gaza. 

To this, the billionaire replied, “Some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected." 

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“If it were to Mozambique instead of Gaza, that’s not as bad, but still… why are we doing that?” Musk asked. 

“Nobody is going to bat 1,000. We will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes," Musk further added. 

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He also said that he is not sure if the US should be sending condoms worth such a big amount anywhere. “I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million dollars worth of condoms anywhere… I’m not sure that’s something Americans would be really excited about. That really is an enormous number of condoms,” he said. 

A condom conflict? 

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On the other hand, Donald Trump, who previously claimed that Musk discovered that “$100 million dollars” were spent by the Biden administration to send "condoms for Hamas", did not comment.

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The US president has previously claimed that Hamas is using condoms to make bombs. He was referring to apparently inflated latex condoms that Palestinians in Gaza used to launch incendiary devices into Israel during his first term in the White House. 

(With inputs from agencies)