Did Alyssa Milano say she had "no idea" that she was supposed to report what she used her $1.2 million USAID grant for? No, that's not true: That story originated on a satirical Facebook page that clearly labels its content as fake. The owner of the page is known for tricking conservatives into liking and sharing made-up content. The self-described satire page's logo was removed from the variations of the claim later spread by other accounts. No credible news organization reported on the actress making a statement about winning or managing a USAID grant.
The claim appeared in an August 31, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) on the "America's Last Line of Defense" under the title "This woman has been clinging to her dead career and scamming free stuff for twenty years." It opened with a photo of Milano with the wording:
Alyssa Milano says she had "no idea" that she was supposed to report what she used her $1.2 million USAID grant for:
"They said it was for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion while I was touring Africa last year, so that's what I did. I didn't know I was supposed to keep track of every dollar we spent."
This is what the image in the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Sep 8 19:35:58 2025 UTC)
As seen in the screenshot above, the image showed a logo of "America's Last Line of Defense" in the middle that reads, "Nothing on this page is real."
The claim was picked up by other social media accounts using an image without the America's Last Line of Defense satire logo disclaimer, as this one posted on the @farmgirlcarrie account (archived here) shows:
(Source: X.com screenshot taken by Lead Stories)
The homepage of the America's Last Line of Defense Facebook account (archived here) clearly states, "The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propoganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real," as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Screenshot of Facebook account America's Last Line of Defense taken by Lead Stories)
The page says it is run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who, for years, has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
The account is part of a network of satire websites and those pages display satire disclaimers and predominantly publish made-up stories with headlines specifically created to trigger Republicans, conservatives and evangelical Christians into angrily sharing or commenting on the story on Facebook without actually reading the full article, exposing them to mockery and ridicule by fans of the sites and pages.
Blair's stories have been widely copied by spammy, foreign website networks seeking to profit by spamming American conservatives with clickbait headlines.
Had Milano actually made the statement, it would have been major news. A Google search (archived here) found no actual news reports of Milano making the statement about a grant, only other social media posts with the same claim. Similarly, the Yahoo! News index of partner news sites and news services (archived here) showed no legitimate news reports of Milano saying she used a $1.2 million USAID grant for diversity, equity and inclusion and had "no idea" she needed to report the details of her spending.
Lead Stories reached out to Milano's representative and will update the story when a response is received.
