The White House blasted the “blatant hypocrisy” of the left-wing group Human Rights Watch (HRW) — which has criticized President Donald Trump’s peace deals — on Wednesday after its executive director accused the United States of being “hostile to human rights.”
In an interview with French newspaper Le Monde published on Wednesday, HRW executive director Philippe Bolopion contended that the Trump administration operates with a “disregard for human rights and the rule of law.” The White House hammered HRW, which has received massive funding from left-wing billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, in an exclusive statement to Breitbart News.
“So-called ‘Human Rights Watch’ claims to support ‘human rights’ while attacking peace deals that save lives, opposing the deportation of criminal illegal aliens that threaten public safety, and supporting transgender youth surgeries that put vulnerable kids at risk,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said. “This is blatant hypocrisy. Far-Left Human Rights Watch merits absolutely zero credibility.”
In the interview, Bolopion was critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and of the administration’s rhetoric toward Soros’s Open Society Foundations network.
“These events are in line with the Trump administration’s disregard for human rights and the rule of law,” he said of the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, contending their deaths were not legally justified and that ICE’s policing practices “are extremely problematic.”
Bolopion also said he wonders whether he “might be prevented from returning to the US,” or whether HRW could face pressure from the American government, given the administration’s rhetoric toward the Open Society Foundations.
After Trump signed a memorandum to counter domestic terrorism and organized political violence in September, weeks after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, he said antifa rioters who had been ravaging Portland “are bad people, and they’re paid a lot of money by rich people.”
When asked, “What names are we talking about?” during the signing ceremony, Trump said, “Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing,” and also mentioned LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
“We hear the same names, but they’re bad, and we’re going to find out, and if they are funding these things, they’re going to have some problems, because they’re agitators and they’re anarchists,” he added.
As Wales pointed out, HRW criticized Trump’s Gaza peace plan, calling it “no substitute for urgent action in Gaza.” It also bashed the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) for honoring Trump with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize in December.
HRW has a long anti-Israel track record, and despite purporting to advocate for human rights, it neglected to condemn an Iranian strike on an Israeli hospital in June, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
In December, it claimed that the Washington Accords peace deal Trump brokered between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda “offers promises, but little more.”
The group has also been a proponent of transing children. In January 2025, Trump signed an order to ban “chemical or surgical mutilation” sex-change procedures for minors, followed by his executive order to protect women’s sports from male athletes a month later. In June, the HRW said in a statement that Trump’s early executive actions in his second term amount “to a federal assault on transgender people’s rights.”
According to InfluenceWatch, HRW has received substantial funding from left-wing foundations, including Open Society Foundations and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Soros said Open Society Foundations would commit $100 million to HRW over a 10-year period back in 2010.
Because of Trump, the HRW has a long history of attacking the United States as a human rights abuser, even before he assumed office for the first time on January 20, 2017, as the Daily Caller noted at the time.
The trend has persisted ever since, with former HRW executive director Kenneth Roth labeling Trump and other world leaders as “anti-rights crusaders” in 2019 and Bolopion on Wednesday claiming Trump would overlook “atrocities” in diplomatic efforts while tweeting the HRW’s 2026 World Report, which focuses on the United States for 10 pages.
And while executive directors past and present trash Trump, HRW employees have donated to Trump’s direct opponents: $11,909.04 in employee donations went to the Biden and Harris campaigns in 2023 and 2024, with zero contributions to Trump or any of his Republican challengers, according to a White House official.