Cher tells ITV News of how she helped to free 'world's loneliest' elephant
Video report by ITV News Presenter Charlene White
US star Cher has told ITV News of how she asked a man over a phone to help her "to try and move an elephant from Pakistan to a sanctuary", as part of the Free Kaavan campaign.
The animal was dubbed the "world’s loneliest" elephant after being alone for years at a zoo in Pakistan.
Speaking of the campaign the singer told ITV News Presenter Charlene White: "Kids on my Twitter feed started sending me this thing, saying Free Kaavan, and there was a picture and I first tried to ignore it and I thought they'll just stop if I don't, because how am I going to go to Pakistan and free an elephant?"
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Cher added: "So I had met this man in Qatar and he had told me that he had helped free into another part of Africa into a sanctuary of 300 elephants.
"I called him like a year later and said, 'Hi, you probably won't remember me, but I probably will. But I need to try and move an elephant from Pakistan to a sanctuary.'
"And he said, 'great, I'll go'."
The singer added it was "difficult" to see the elephant traumatised when she first saw him, with his body and head "rocking".
She added: "We did the heavy lifting, to go to the Supreme court, to petition everyone.
"And then we called in Free The Wild, then we called in for pause because they have doctors and they're a huge organisation."
Cher also described how she felt it was a duty to do something to help the elephant.
She said: "I have this belief that what comes to you, belongs to you. So if something happens to you and you are engaged in it, then it's your duty to do something about it.
"So that's pretty much what we're doing in the pandemic. Because yes, it's not just about, I love animals, but you have to, I love people, so you have to you have to spread it all around."
When asked about the leadership during the pandemic, the singer said: "In America we're really suffering because we had no help. We had no leadership."
She added: "If your president doesn't care if you live or die, that's a pretty hard pill to swallow because you're just sitting there going, 'why isn't someone helping me', you know?"
When asked what she makes of Donald Trump as a US President, Cher said: "I've lived through like 14 presidents and I never thought that there would be a president that wouldn't care - that doesn't even like Americans."
She continued: "I've known Joe since 2006, and I know what kind of a man he is. He's smart, he's strong, a little temper. But he's a great, a great man. Who's a smart man. Who's got all this experience.
"Now, Trump is like if I can't be in The White House, I'm going to burn it down, you know? So what he's trying to do is symbolically burn the house down so that Joe can't get things done. So I don't care about him at all."
Cher also spoke to ITV News Presenter Charlene White about women's rights and feminism before adding, "we have to work twice as hard."
When asked if she would call herself a feminist, she said: "Yes, I would. I care about women's rights and we have had to fight for everything we've gotten. We have had to take it and fight for it, and it's not fair."
She added: "We've had to fight for a lot. I love men - I think men are the greatest, but still they haven't had to go through what we've had to go through and are still going through.
"So I think maybe fighting is not the right word, but it's fighting in a different way. We have to be twice as good. We have to work twice as hard."