Federal employees at the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) were greeted this morning by television sets at the Agency’s Washington, DC, headquartered who appears to be an AI-generated video of President Donald Trump kissing the feet of Elon Musk, accompanied by “Long Live the Real King.”
A person at the HUD headquarters on Monday morning shared a video with Wired in which the scene plays on a loop on a TV screen in the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building. The source, which received anonymity about the fear of consequences, says that workers at the building had to turn off every TV by hand to stop the video.
It is currently unclear who was behind the prank. Similar AI-generated videos and quiet images of Trump kissing Musk’s feet have been shared on social media platforms since last year.
“Another waste of taxpayers dollars and resources,” Kasey Lovett, a HUD spokesman, told Wired. “Appropriate steps will be taken for all involved.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The incident came a few days after the documents leaked, the so -called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) ‘s project of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) intended to eradicate 4,000 employees at the agency, which is in the midst of handling an US housing crisis.
NPR reported over the weekend that HUD’s Community Planning and Development Office is expected to lose 84 percent of its staff according to the leaked documents.
“We have internally decided to notify our beneficiaries -every mayor, provincial chief, governor, non -profit chief executive and the recipient of Congress Market -that they should expect a loss or significant unpredictable delay in financing,” a current Hud employee told Wired.
Over the weekend, employees at HUD, like many other federal workers, received NE -mail from the office of staff management demanding an answer with “About 5 bullets of what you reached last week. “
Leadership at many of the agencies, as well as the leaders of the Federal Workers’ Union, told their members not to respond to the e -mail, while HUD leadership told employees to wait until at least the afternoon Monday before taking any action, a HUD source told Wired.