As Elon Musk began dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development on Donald Trump’s behalf, and strongmen in Russia, Hungary and El Salvador rejoiced, actor Ben Stiller went on X to slam an evidently fake entertainment news report that says that he, Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn and celebrities received millions of taxpayer dollars to promote U.S. government support for Ukraine.
“These are lies coming from Russian media,” the “Zoolander” actor said on X in response to the video’s claim that he received $4 million from the embattled agency. “I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind.”
Stiller notably didn’t travel to Ukraine in June 2022 at the behest of the U.S. government, according to ABC News. Instead he visited Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Stiller was there to mark World Refugee Day, as Russia’s February 2022 invasion forced millions of Ukrainians to flee to other countries in Europe.
In another X post, Stiller also called the video “totally false” and “untrue.” The video used a logo for E! News but appeared to be amateurishly done and lacking the entertainment site’s usually glitzy production values. The video also made the outlandish claim that Angelina Jolie received $20 million from USAID for her May 2022 visit to Lviv. But like Stiller, the “Maria” star was...
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