In a now-viral Reuters story, the corporate media has found a new scapegoat for a global health crisis: President Donald Trump.
HIV infections are spiking in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to the Reuters article, however, it’s not the fault of decades of underinvestment by local governments, failing international NGOs, or endemic healthcare inequality.
No, it’s the fault of a U.S. president thousands of miles away, who has only been back in office for five months.
It would be laughable if it weren’t so grotesquely cynical.
Reuters tells the story of Emmanuel Cherem, a 25-year-old gay man in Nigeria who recently tested positive for HIV.
Cherem’s heartbreak is real, and his situation is tragic.
Yet, the “journalist” wastes no time leveraging it for a hit piece against Trump, suggesting that a temporary pause on U.S. foreign aid early in his administration is responsible for his diagnosis and, by extension, the worsening AIDS crisis in Africa.
Four gay men in Africa told @Reuters they tested positive for HIV since President Trump ordered cuts to a program that funded deliveries of a drug that curbed sexual transmission of the virus https://t.co/vtVkY693c2 pic.twitter.com/Mj3eOLceCw
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 20, 2025
This is the media at its worst: cynical, manipulative, and allergic to context.
HIV/AIDS is a decades-old global health catastrophe, deeply intertwined with local policy failures, social stigma, economic injustice, and corrupt governance.
But rather than report on those structural realities, Reuters opts for a more convenient narrative of blaming Trump.
Never mind that Trump merely paused funding temporarily to audit how taxpayer dollars were being used.
Never mind that foreign aid has long been criticized for inefficiency, corruption, and creating dependency.
Never mind that some of the very same African governments receiving PEPFAR money criminalize homosexuality, making it unsafe for gay men to even access clinics, regardless of how many American dollars are thrown their way.
Let’s not mention that part. Let’s just blame Trump.
The article conveniently glosses over the fact that the U.S. remains the largest single contributor to global HIV/AIDS relief.
It ignores that programs like PEPFAR have been sustained, and even expanded, under both Democratic and Republican presidents.
It fails to mention that South Africa, the country with the world’s largest HIV-positive population, pays for its own PrEP supply.
In fact, the reporter admits that clinics still offer the drug for free, but blames Trump because key populations are “afraid” to go to them due to local discrimination.
Yet somehow, Reuters wants us to believe this is all Trump’s fault.
The problem here is not that funding was paused or reassessed.
The problem is the very premise of a global health system that relies on a single foreign government to sustain critical treatment in dozens of sovereign nations.
If an HIV prevention program collapses the moment one American president suspends aid for 90 days, the real issue isn’t U.S. policy.
It’s a global aid model that was never sustainable to begin with.
This is what corporate media does: it takes real suffering, strips away context, and repackages it as anti-Trump propaganda.
It tells African citizens that their health outcomes are dictated not by their own leaders, but by Washington.
It shifts responsibility away from the governments that persecute LGBTQ+ citizens and underfund clinics, and blames it all on an American president for “being mean.”
And worst of all, it uses the trauma of vulnerable people, like Emmanuel Cherem, as clickbait.
There are real conversations to have about the limits and responsibilities of U.S. foreign aid.
About how to support key populations without reinforcing dependency.
About the failures of local health systems.
But the media doesn’t want those conversations.
The corporate media wants a villain.
And Trump is the one they’ve chosen, no matter the context, no matter the continent, no matter the facts.
We can, and should, care about global health and the fight against AIDS.
But we should also expect honest journalism.
Journalism that doesn’t exploit people’s pain just to score partisan points.
And we should remember: when the press demands that one American president be responsible for the entire planet’s problems, it’s not holding him accountable.
It’s abdicating responsibility itself.
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