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| - As U.S. President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk began the process of dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, among other agencies, in early 2025, rumors about USAID operations spread online. One pervasive story claimed the government agency spent millions of dollars to fund celebrities' trips to Ukraine to support the war effort against Russia.
A popular video, purportedly by entertainment news network E! News, claimed the agency spent $4 million to send actor Ben Stiller to Ukraine. Musk and the president's son Donald Trump Jr. amplified (archived) the video, gaining millions of views.
Additionally, an article on EurAsia Daily — which has been referred to as a Russian propaganda website by Estonian and Azerbaijani media organizations — spread the claim about Stiller under the headline, "At the call of the pocket: Hollywood stars received round sums from USAID for supporting Kiev."
One post sharing the video stated:
USAID was using our tax dollars to send celebrities to UKRAINE to increase Zelensky's popularity around the world and, in particular, the U.S.
Angelina Jolie $20 million
Sean Pean $5 million
Jean Claude Van Dam $1.5 million
Orlando Bloom $8 million
Ben Stiller $4 million
BURN USAID TO THE GROUND. 🔥🔥
We don't need it under any department.
The post also shared video footage of Stiller in Ukraine, meeting members of the nation's military.
(X user @angelwoman501)
Stiller did go to Ukraine with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in 2022, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. However, this trip was not funded by USAID money. Stiller posted on his verified X account that he entirely self-funded the trip. We have reached out to USAID to learn more and will update this story accordingly. As such, we rate this claim as false.
On Feb. 5, 2025, Stiller wrote on X, in response to the claim: "These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 💯 percent false."
(X user @BenStiller)
We reached out to E! News to learn more about where the video originated from. We found no evidence of it on E! News' website (or this archived page from Feb. 6, 2025), YouTube or Instagram accounts. We also noticed that the video misspelled the last name of actor Jean-Claude Van Damme as "Van Damm."
AFP journalist Bill McCarthy confirmed with E! News that this video did not originate from the outlet:
The authentic video of Stiller was taken in June 2022 and showed him meeting Zelenskyy. CBS News had footage of the same encounter shot from a slightly different angle.
Stiller was appointed a goodwill ambassador with UNHCR in 2018 and has often posted on Instagram about his work with the group, and about his trip to Ukraine:
On Feb. 6, 2025, UNHCR also posted a statement on its website confirming Stiller funded his own trip:
In response to media enquiries, we confirm that Goodwill Ambassador Ben Stiller is not compensated for his work with UNHCR and self-funds his travel. Ben has been supporting UNHCR since 2016 and has been a Goodwill Ambassador since 2018. We are grateful for Ben's longstanding support to refugees and forcibly displaced people.
USAID has been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration throughout early 2025. We previously covered the false claims that the agency provided $8 million in funding to the news company Politico and $84 million in funding to Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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