White House pushes back on Richard Gere’s USAID comments

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, pushed back this week after actor Richard Gere criticized the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Mr. Gere, 76, has used a recent press tour for the second season of his Paramount+ series “The Agency” to take repeated aim at President Trump, weighing in on immigration policy, the war in Gaza and the administration’s cuts to USAID.

In a June interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Gere said, “USAID was probably the most pure thing America did up to that moment.” He credited the agency with funding global health initiatives and said he was “ashamed” that Mr. Trump had shut it down on his first day back in office.

Mr. Cheung responded to the comments on X, dismissing Mr. Gere’s criticism without directly engaging with his underlying argument about the agency’s humanitarian record.

The administration has repeatedly characterized USAID as having funded wasteful and ideologically driven projects abroad, citing examples such as LGBTQ-focused grants and diversity programs in countries including Guatemala and Serbia, along with initiatives in Iraq, Jamaica and Uganda flagged by the White House’s rapid-response account on X. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials have called the agency a “slush fund” for left-wing causes.

Mr. Rubio has repeatedly argued that only 12 cents of every USAID dollar reached recipients, a characterization the administration uses to justify its overhaul of foreign aid. In Senate testimony last year, Mr. Rubio said, “At USAID, 12 cents of every dollar was reaching the recipient.”

Independent fact-checkers have disputed that interpretation of the underlying USAID data, noting the figure reflects funds sent directly to local organizations rather than the total share of aid that ultimately reached beneficiaries.

The Trump administration folded USAID’s functions into the State Department early in the president’s second term, arguing the agency had strayed from its humanitarian mission and had been used to bankroll left-wing political causes abroad.