In President Trump’s 90-minute speech to Congress on March 4th, he spent only a mere five and a half minutes on foreign policy. One time he did talk about an international issue was while praising Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency for all the waste it had supposedly uncovered.
Among the examples Trump cited was: “$8 million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.”
The only part of that assertion that may true is that Trump has not heard of the country before, even though there is an American embassy in its capitol and Trump branded golf shirts have been made there.
A false claim
The claim of $8 million was spent to promote LGBTQI+ is quite simply false, according to the Times of London and other sources.
The Times pointed out where American assistance has actually gone: “Lesotho has one of the highest rates of HIV/Aids in the world, and America has committed more than $630 million since 2006 to tackling the disease, according to the US embassy in Maseru. The U.S. government did not list any financial support for LGBT rights in Lesotho.”
The infection rate for HIV/Aids is the reason a country with about the same population as Houston received so much assistance. The money spent there is not wasted.
It is not only an aid to people who need it. It is an investment in protecting the health of Americans. As COVID demonstrated, pandemics don’t respect national borders. A disease prevented abroad is one that does not spread here.
And the risk is to more than just people who might contract HIV. That virus weakens the immune system and makes it far easier to be afflicted by other health problems, including diseases like tuberculosis. With the waning of COVID, TB has resumed its status as the infectious disease that kills the most people.
If it is not treated, most of those who have active TB will die. It killed 2.3 million people worldwide in 2000. A third of them also had HIV. And it is spread through the air and is highly transmissible.
The end of PEPFAR
Nearly one in five adults in Lesotho are HIV positive. The American assistance was made possible by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was started in 2003 by President George W. Bush. Since then, PEPFAR, working in 55 countries, has saved 26 million lives and prevented 7.8 million babies from being born with HIV.
PEPFAR funding has been frozen and its future is unclear. It is clear that without it, millions of people around the world will die from HIV who would have otherwise been able to live with the virus. Countries as poor as Lesotho will be especially hard hit and unable to respond to a resurgence of HIV. On a per capita basis, the U.S. economy is 90 times more productive than Lesotho’s.
There is another reason why a country like Lesotho matters. It is always useful to have the good will needed to convince other countries that what the U.S. wants them to do is in their interest rather than trying to force their compliance with threats of military action or economic sanctions.
Diplomatic success has just become much harder thanks to the abrupt suspension and probable termination of aid programs like PEPFAR. The gratuitous insult to Lesotho that got a few laughs from fellow Republicans, sadly including senators and representatives, was not lost on the rest of the world.
It will be taken as a sign that America suddenly no longer cares about small, obscure countries. As a result, no nation will now look at the United States and say with confidence that it is a stable and reliable ally.
But has America become so callous virtually overnight? According to a recent poll, 62% of Americans identify as Christians.
In 2020 President Trump announced he was no longer a Presbyterian and was instead a nondenominational Christian. Does that mean someone who feels no need to reflect Christian values?
Mercy for the poor
The Bible says in Proverbs 19:17, “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.” This verse and others are interpreted to mean that showing mercy to the poor is a moral obligation and a spiritual commitment to God.
Do Americans of all faiths want the image of America abroad to be two smirking billionaires oblivious to the needs of anyone other than themselves? Or should it be something that reflects what the vast majority of Americans still claim to believe in?
In addition to its very high rate of HIV, Lesotho has one other unfortunate health statistic. It has the world’s highest suicide rate. According to the World Health Organization, 87.5 people per 100,000 of Lesotho’s population take their own life every year. That may go even higher now that Donald Trump has added so much to the nation’s suffering.
Dennis Jett, former American ambassador to Mozambique and Peru, is a professor of international affairs at the Pennsylvania State University and the author of “American Ambassadors.” He writes for the Post-Gazette every other Friday. His previous article was “Trump's new America is worse than a banana republic.”
First Published: March 21, 2025, 8:30 a.m.
Updated: March 21, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
