Trump says military newspaper will not see funding cut after Pentagon orders it to shut down

President Trump said that the military newspaper Stars and Stripes will not be dissolving after reports surfaced that its funding was being pulled.

“The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch. It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!” Trump said in a Friday afternoon tweet.

The newspaper, which was founded in 1861 at the outset of the Civil War, is geared toward delivering news to troops. USA Today on Friday published a memo from the Pentagon ordering the publisher of Stars and Stripes to present a plan that “dissolves” the news organization by Sept. 15. The publisher was told to develop a “specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide.”

“The last newspaper publication (in all forms) will be September 30, 2020,” Col. Paul Haverstick Jr. wrote in the memo.

The Pentagon had previously proposed cutting the $15 million subsidy from the 2021 fiscal budget, a move that Defense Secretary Mark Esper defended during a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels earlier in 2020.

“We trimmed the support for Stars and Stripes because we need to invest that money, as we did with many, many other programs, into higher-priority issues,” Esper said.

Earlier this week, a bipartisan cast of lawmakers, including Trump ally Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, sent a letter to Esper requesting that the Pentagon rescind the decision and “reinstate the funding necessary for it to continue operations.”

The Washington Examiner reached out to the Pentagon for comment about Trump’s tweet but did not immediately receive a response.