Actor and humanitarian Richard Gere is talking about one of the biggest and least talked about actions taken during the Trump presidency: the shutting down of the U.S.Agency for International Development, or USAID.
“USAID was probably the most pure thing that America did up to that moment,” Gere said in an interview.
“It was help for people in need, whether it was health, education, or women’s issues.It was big things, small things – all kinds of things.”
The agency, created by John F.
Kennedy in 1961, showed the country’s best values instead of just its military or economic power.
“That was the good part of us,” Gere said.
For many years, USAID supported programs that saved lives through better health care and nutrition, improved literacy, and helped with famine and disasters all over the world.
Its PEPFAR program alone saved 25 million people from dying of HIV.
Through Elon Musk and DOGE, Trump quickly shut down the agency on his first day in office, and by July it no longer existed, with most of its remaining programs moving into the State Department.
The effects have been bad.
In some of the poorest countries, health clinics have closed, vaccinations have stopped, and food and nutrition programs have been reduced.Humanitarian groups say hundreds of thousands of people have already died, and millions more are in danger.
Gere said Trump didn’t understand what USAID actually did.
“He wouldn’t even know what USAID stands for,” Gere said.“And he has people around him who don’t know either.”
Musk, who grew up ignoring poor people in apartheid South Africa, called USAID a “criminal organization,” and happily destroyed it, like throwing it into a metaphorical wood-chipper.
Gere said the destruction of USAID shows that Trump doesn’t understand what wealth really means.
“He keeps saying we’re the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world.What do you do if you’re the wealthiest, most powerful?You help people.People who don’t have any health care.”
For Gere, USAID stood for a simple idea: that the strongest country in the world should use some of that strength to save lives.
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