“I bet he’s never watched his best friend die of AIDS"
By Max Pilley 2nd December 2025
Madonna at the 2025 Met Gala on May 05, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Madonna has hit out at the Donald Trump administration for its “unthinkable” decision not to commemorate World AIDS Day.
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The event has been held on December 1 every year since 1988 to mark the memory of the lives lost to the AIDS pandemic and to raise awareness about the disease, but the US State Department has reportedly instructed employees not to use federal funds to commemorate the day.
AdvertisementIn an Instagram post on the day itself, Madonna wrote: “For four decades, this day has been internationally recognized around the world by people from all walks of life, because millions of people’s lives have been touched by the HIV crisis. People have lost lovers and husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and mothers and daughters and children to this deadline disease, of which there is still no cure.”
She went on to turn her focus to the president, adding: “Donald Trump has announced that World AIDS Day should no longer be acknowledged. It’s one thing to order federal agents to refrain from commemorating this day, but to ask the general public to pretend it never happened is ridiculous, it’s absurd, it’s unthinkable.”
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“I bet he’s never watched his best friend die of AIDS, held their hand, and watched the blood drain from their face as they took their last breath at the age of 23.”
She continued: “This list of people that I have known and loved and lost to AIDS is pretty long. I’m sure many of you out there can relate. Let me say it one more time – there still isn’t a cure for AIDS, and people still die from it. I refuse to acknowledge that these people have died in vain. And I will continue to honor World AIDS Day, and I hope you will honor it with me.”
RecommendedMadonna was known for highlighting the plight of the gay community during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, losing two close friends to the syndrome: ballet teacher and mentor Christopher Flynn and the artist Keith Haring.
In 2019, she told NME: “During the AIDS epidemic, I was getting involved with a lot of groups and speaking up and I was enraged by how I saw people being treated. I came to the LGBTQ community and put my arms around them. While everyone else was running away from them, I was running towards them.”
Talking about how her advocacy led to a backlash against her, she added: “It was so crazy. For months I was going around saying I wasn’t HIV positive but then I thought, What if I was? Does that make me a bad person? And are you going to treat me differently? It was a crazy time and it really hurt me a lot. That’s just one circumstance where people – ‘scuse me for swearing – really tried to fuck with me.”
AdvertisementMadonna has been a longstanding critic of Trump, writing after his second election win last November: “Trying to get my head around why a convicted felon, rapist, bigot was chosen to lead our country because he’s good for the economy?”
She spoke out against his raft of executive orders in January, and reacted angrily to him posting an image of himself in February under the banner ‘Long Live The King’.
Madonna was also highly prominent at the Women’s March on Washington after Trump’s first inauguration in January 2017. “I’m angry,” she told the crowd. “Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. But I know that this won’t change anything.”
Elsewhere, the Queen of Pop released her ‘Bedtime Stories’ 30th anniversary EP on Friday (November 28), including demos and rarities from her 1994 album.
