“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 tweeted Friday.
Trump’s statement comes after the Defense Department notified Stars and Stripes in February that it intended to cut funding to the outlet. In an August 4 memo to the outlet’s publisher, first obtained by USA Today, the Pentagon gave the newspaper a September 15 deadline to present a plan for ceasing operations, with the last edition being published on September 30.
“In a heretofore unpublicized memo, the Pentagon delivered an order to shutter the Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that has been a lifeline and a voice for American troops since the Civil War,” Kathy Kiely wrote in a Friday op-ed for USA Today.
“The memo orders the publisher of the news organization (which now publishes online as well as in print) to present a plan that ‘dissolves the Stars and Stripes’ by Sept. 15 including ‘specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide,’” Kiely added.
The Pentagon's order to dissolve the publication is an attempt to slash the $15.5 million in funding for the paper from the department’s budget.
Earlier this week, 15 US senators sent a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper requesting he reinstate that funding.
“Stars and Stripes is an essential part of our nation's freedom of the press that serves the very population charged with defending that freedom,” the senators wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Politico.