White House Communications Director Steven Cheung took an eyebrow-raising approach when replying to Richard Gere after the actor called out the Trump administration.
On Monday, Cheung found the time to post about Gere criticizing the White House for effectively shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development, which studies show has improved global health through a variety of means.
The White House’s decision, in the name of cutting costs, was controversial at the time and remains so.
Rather than challenge any specific point raised by Gere, 76, or acknowledge the problems that accompanied the White House’s slapdash policy change—like all the wasted food—Cheung weighed in with an unrelated smear.
“Sorry, not going to listen to a guy that may have put a gerbil up his a--,” Cheung, 44, wrote on X, referencing a rumor from the 1990s that Gere himself called an “urban myth.”
Cheung’s baseless comment was prompted by the 76-year-old actor explaining in a June interview with the Associated Press what USAID achieved.
“USAID was probably the most pure thing America did up to that moment. It was a giveaway program to needy people—whether it was health, whether it was education, [whether] it was women’s issues,“ Gere said. ”What they did with HIV/AIDS saved tens of millions of lives—continuing. [Trump] stopped that day one. It was insane... He wouldn’t even know what it stands for— USAID—and he has idiots around him who have the same ignorance about it."
Gere added that he was “ashamed” about the fate of USAID.
“[Trump] keeps saying we’re the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world,” he said. “Well, what do you do if you’re the wealthiest, most powerful? You help people.”
Gere has long been a humanitarian. The actor, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024, advocates for human rights in Tibet in part through Tibet House US, which he co-founded, and supports the Tibetan Independence Movement. Gere has also backed AIDS awareness and education, and formed the Gere Foundation India Trust towards those ends.
Among the Trump administration’s USAID cuts were HIV-prevention supplies and birth control, which ended up sitting in a warehouse for so long that they were no longer usable.
With USAID essentially out of the picture thanks to Trump, the global health outlook is grim. According to a November report by Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, the administration’s dismantling of USAID had already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children.
A rep for Gere did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
