Ben Stiller has declared that social media posts making the rounds on-line, which allege that he used American tax {dollars} to fund his 2022 journey to Ukraine, are "completely false" and "unfaithful."

The There's One thing About Mary actor and the producer of Apple TV+ sequence Severance reposted social media messages that decried using public funds to ship celebrities like himself to Ukraine to, as one claimed, enhance the recognition of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. A video that accompanied the unique posting featured an E! Information watermark and an odd-sounding voice that named a number of celebrities who had supposedly been funded by america Company for Worldwide Growth. Stiller's journey, it alleged, had value $4 million.

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The fake posts that he cited had already been flagged with an advisory to readers on X, which is owned by President Donald Trump's adviser Elon Musk, that readers had added context to the video. They famous that the video was not truly from the supply it claimed to be.

For his half, Stiller mentioned, "These are lies coming from Russian media. I fully self-funded my humanitarian journey to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and positively no fee of any sort."

See one among his posts beneath.

The false video claims that celebrities together with Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Orlando Bloom, and Jean-Claude Van Damme cleaned up with "funds."

Stiller visited Ukraine to mark World Refugee Day 2022, as a goodwill ambassador for humanitarian group UNHCR, which famous on the time that he was there to "stand in solidarity with individuals displaced by conflict and battle all around the globe"

USAID was created in 1961 by an govt order from President John F. Kennedy, in keeping with the now-disabled USAID web site, and labored to enhance situations in additional than 100 nations.

"Our goal is to help companions to change into self-reliant and able to main their very own improvement journeys. We make progress towards this by decreasing the attain of battle, stopping the unfold of pandemic illness, and counteracting the drivers of violence, instability, transnational crime and different safety threats," in keeping with the previous web site's historical past. "We promote American prosperity by investments that increase markets for U.S. exports; create a stage enjoying area for U.S. companies; and help extra secure, resilient, and democratic societies. We stand with individuals when catastrophe strikes or disaster emerges because the world chief in humanitarian help."

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Stiller's flag comes because the Trump administration, previously two weeks, has frozen overseas assist applications and "fired. furloughed or placed on go away the majority of USAID staff," in keeping with the Washington Post. The world's richest man, Musk leads a group beneath White Home supervision referred to as the Division of Authorities Effectivity, or DOGE, which has focused USAID for dismantling. Musk's standing is as "a particular authorities worker," a "non permanent appointment that enables an individual to work for not more than 130 days a yr to carry out 'restricted' providers," NPR reported.

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