On Monday, screens at the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development played a clip showing President Donald Trump licking the feet of Elon Musk. “Long live the true King” a caption read in the video that was generated with the use of artificial intelligence–a clear reference to the words used by the president himself last week, when he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
Before the video was quickly removed, some HUD employees managed to record it and spread it on social media, where it immediately went viral. The video comes at a time of chaos for all federal agencies as Musk’s DOGE continues to make massive cuts to federal staff, including HUD’s.
One agency staff member said such cuts will have a drastic impact on all Americans to whom the department offers its assistance, “whether it’s a family with children denied housing, someone sexually harassed by their property manager, denying someone with a wheelchair an accessible unit,” a source added.
Meanwhile, 2024 saw the highest number of people experiencing homelessness in a single night: 771,480. “So I’m not surprised someone at HUD felt so strongly about the imminent cuts to defy the current administration and put their job at risk in doing so”, explained one of the employees.
Not surprisingly, the footage in which the president is seen licking the feet of his most trusted aide has been the talk of the town. A group of House Democrats, for example, winked before the work of the clip’s unknown creator, saying “Not all heroes wear capes”. In contrast, the press office of HUD Secretary Scott Turner communicated: “There is nothing heroic about abusing taxpayer resources.”
The video comes just days after Musk’s speech at CPAC, during which the DOGE director implored the nation to “legalize comedy.” “The Left wanted to make comedy illegal, you know”, said the world’s richest man, “Like you can’t make fun of anything, so there’s like, comedy sucks, it’s like nothing’s funny, you can’t make fun of anything, it’s like: legalize comedy! Yeah!”. Evidently, someone must have taken this literally.
DOGE will use AI, the same technology used to mock Trump and Musk, to evaluate the responses of federal employees who were asked to provide five reasons to justify their continued employment and their activities during the past week. The employees will have to respond by email: those who fail to do so will be considered to have resigned, as explained by Musk himself.
According to sources at NBC, therefore, it is not human individuals who will be evaluating whether their work is essential or not, but rather AI. In their emails, employees were not allowed to attach links or additional files, just to make the technology’s task easier.
The initiative was roundly criticized by most. In response to the criticism Musk called federal employees “incompetent.” President Trump finally defended the plan promoted by his most trusted ally, declaring, “I thought it was brilliant. A lot of people don’t respond because they don’t even exist.”
