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Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr and other prominent conservatives are sharing a video that claims to show E! News reporting that the US's humanitarian agency paid millions of dollars to celebrities including Angelina Jolie and Ben Stiller to visit Ukraine and help boost President Volodymyr Zelensky's popularity amid the country's war with Russia. But the clip is not an authentic report, a spokesperson for the entertainment news channel told AFP, and Stiller has publicly rejected the allegations as false.
"Did you know that USAID spent your tax dollars to fund celebrity trips to Ukraine, all to boost Zelensky's popularity among Americans?" says a February 5, 2025 post on X from "I Meme Therefore I Am," a popular conservative account that has previously spread misinformation, including about the Ukrainian leader.
Billionaire Musk, tasked by US President Donald Trump with overhauling the federal government, reposted the clip to his more than 216 million followers on the platform he owns.
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Screenshot from X taken February 6, 2025
Trump Jr, the president's eldest son, and Sidney Powell, a former Trump attorney who played an outsized role in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, also amplified the video.
The 36-second clip is mocked up in the form of a video report from E! News, with the entertainment news site's logo featured throughout. It...
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