18:37

Fact check: HIV funding

The president just said: “What we’ve done for Aids in Africa is unbelievable. We’ve spent $6bn a year. That’s been going on for a long time. Nobody knows that. You’ve never heard that. I’ve never heard that.”

We must say here that a lot of people know that. Probably the most relevant thing there is Trump saying that he has never heard that.

The spending quote for Africa is part of the annual $6.8bn in US funds for global HIV and Aids relief. What Donald Trump failed to say is that while he is keen to spend more on beating HIV and Aids in the US, he has proposed cuts in US funding funding for Aids programs in Africa.

Here are extracts from this report in the Washington Blade from February, 2020: