Federal employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) were greeted this morning by television sets at the agency’s Washington, DC headquarters playing what appears to be an AI-generated video of President Donald Trump kissing the feet of Elon Musk, accompanied by the words: “LONG LIVE THE REAL KING.”
A person at HUD headquarters on Monday morning shared a video with WIRED showing the scene playing out on a loop on a TV screen inside the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building. The source, who was granted anonymity over fears of repercussions, says that workers at the building had to manually turn off each TV in order to stop the video playing.
It is currently unclear who was behind the prank. Similar AI-generated videos and still images of Trump kissing Musk’s feet have been shared on social media platforms since last year.
“Another waste of taxpayer dollars and resources,” Kasey Lovett, a HUD spokesperson tells WIRED. “Appropriate action will be taken for all involved.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The incident came just days after leaked documents showed that Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project was planning to eradicate 4,000 employees at the agency, which is in the midst of dealing with a US housing crisis.
NPR reported this weekend that HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development is slated to lose 84 percent of its staff according to leaked documents.
“We’ve decided internally to start notifying our grantees—every mayor, county head, governor, nonprofit CEO, and congressional earmark recipient—that they should anticipate a loss or significant unpredictable delay in funding,” a current HUD employee tells WIRED.
Over the weekend, employees at HUD, like many other federal workers, received an email from the Office of Personnel Management demanding a reply with “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week.”
Leadership at many of the agencies, as well as federal worker union leaders, told their members not to respond to the emails, while HUD leadership told employees to wait until at least noon on Monday before taking any action, a HUD source tells WIRED.