US President Donald Trump has said his administration temporarily halted foreign spending to “look at the scams, dishonesty, waste and abuse that’s taking place in our government for too long”.

That included $50m “sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas”, the president said, repeating a claim made earlier by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“You know what’s happened to them? They’ve used them as a method of making bombs,” Trump said in televised remarks.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) contraceptive funding for 2023 does not list any funding for condoms for the entire Middle East region that year.