Richard Gere told the truth about USAID. Trump’s bully answered like a schoolyard bigot

Richard Gere said something true, something decent, and something urgent, and the White House communications director’s response was to dredge up a decades-old, untrue smear about his sex life.Trump’s mouthpiece is Steven Cheung, who is less a human being than a sniveling, childish, Jabba the Hutt knockoff who doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to respond in a dignified manner to anyone who dares to point out what Trump’s lethal policies are actually doing to people.In a June interview with the Associated Press, Gere defended the work and significant relevance of USAID, which was, before Trump brutally tore it apart, the principal U.S. government agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid, managing overseas development, and providing emergency humanitarian relief to promote global economic growth, strengthen democratic societies, and improve public health in developing nations.He spoke emphatically as someone who spent decades doing humanitarian work. He called it close to the best thing America ever did. He was right. It was a program that provided health care, education, and support for women and people who had absolutely nothing.Related: Richard Gere Wins Humanitarian AwardGere also pointed to what the agency’s HIV/AIDS work accomplished, crediting it with saving tens of millions of lives before the Trump administration shut it down on day one. He was justifiably angry and harsh about the ignorance behind that decision.He also said he was ashamed that a country that never stops calling itself the richest and most powerful in the world used that position to walk away from the people who needed help the most.The human toll of dismantling USAID is starting to become tragically documented. A report from House Oversight Democrats found the agency's collapse had already contributed to roughly 600,000 deaths, most of them children. Further, it found HIV-prevention supplies and contraceptives bought and paid for by American taxpayers sitting