Elton John has shared his thoughts on why he believes ‘ending AIDS’ could be Donald Trump’s most significant accomplishment.
The renowned British singer, who is 76 years old, has dedicated many years to raising awareness about AIDS/HIV. He established the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992 during the height of the epidemic and, alongside his husband David Furnish, continues to advocate for the cause.
There is a global goal to eliminate new HIV cases by 2030. However, President Trump’s recent budget cuts might hinder this progress.
These reductions affect US foreign assistance, including significant funding cuts to PEPFAR, an international HIV/AIDS response program. UNAIDS projects that these pauses could result in ‘an additional 6.6 million new HIV infections’, averaging about 23,000 new cases each day.
The legendary musician expressed his frustration in a recent interview with Variety: “I just am enraged by it. It’s very frustrating when you’ve got the tools in your hand to end it, and then you find that countries won’t help.”
John further commented, “You know, there’s a big war that’s being settled, hopefully,” referring to the situation in Gaza. “But there’s another war, with people who are suffering from HIV and AIDS that should be able to get their medicine but can’t, because governments won’t let them. It’s inhumane. So my big beef at the moment is, yes, thank God, maybe there’s peace, after more things are sorted out.”
He emphasized that there are ‘crimes against millions of other people’ due to governmental decisions, stigma, and hatred. “It’s so frustrating when you have the medicine, you have prep, you have the antiretrovirals. We can stop the spread of AIDS, if people just got off their backsides and treated human beings in a Christian kind of way,” John noted.
John highlighted that, due to medical and scientific advancements, ‘this is the only disease that can be completely cured in one’s lifetime’.
He added: “President Trump has maybe solved the peace problem. If he wants to go down as one of the greatest presidents in history … if he ended AIDS, that would really be a feather in his cap.”
According to Variety, John and Trump share a ‘long history’, with John having performed at Trump’s wedding to Melania at Mar-a-Lago in 2005.
John was invited to perform at Trump’s 2016 inauguration but chose to decline.
When asked by Variety why John didn’t directly reach out to Trump regarding the funding cuts, Furnish explained that they had been engaged in ‘very positive’ discussions with officials in Washington.
Since taking office, Trump has issued several executive orders, prominently affecting transgender individuals, such as a policy to ban transgender people from military service and measures regarding transgender athletes in women’s sports.