Ben Stiller Hits Back at Claim USAID Funded His Trip to Ukraine

Ben Stiller is setting the record straight about his humanitarian trip to Ukraine … denying he ever received any payment from USAID to visit the war-torn country.

Elon Musk pushed out a purported E! News video on X yesterday, which alleged a number of celebrities — including Stiller, Angelina Jolie, Orlando Bloom and Sean Penn — were sent to Ukraine, paid for with American taxpayers’ money. The video has been proven fake.

But the fake video picked up steam on social media thanks to countless retweets from Trump supporters, including Donald Trump Jr. and Scott Baio

He wrote … “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 personal payments.”

Stiller visited Ukraine in 2022 amid its ongoing war after Russia invaded the country in 2022. He met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who Stiller called his “hero.”

The actor later recorded a video message from Ukraine for World Refugee Day, calling for others to support people displaced by the violence.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is currently in the process of trying to shut down USAID — the U.S. Agency for International Development, which leads humanitarian and economic improvement efforts abroad — with the Tesla CEO himself calling it a “criminal organization” on X.