Did USAID place a real ad reading "Help Eliminate Elon" on a street in Washington, D.C., in February 2025? No, that's not true: Capital Bikeshare, the owner of the bike stand ad box, stopped selling ads in April 2024, according to the person who was last in charge of selling the ads. It would be an unauthorized fake ad, the ad salesman said.
The claim appeared in an X post (archived here) published on February 12, 2025, with a caption that read:
Holy sh*t this is a real USAID graphic spotted in Washington DC.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
((Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Feb 12 23:43:23 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories could not immediately locate the street where this photo was taken, but we did determine it showed a Capital Bikeshare bike stand in the Washington, D.C., area. The snow on the bikes matched the level of snow at another such bike stand photographed on February 11, 2025.
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R- North Carolina, posted to X a video of himself in front of the ad box. Here is his post:
This disgusting threat was made against @elonmusk for helping President Trump eliminate government waste and protect taxpayer dollars. We need to find out who paid for this and who allowed it to be posted.
-- Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) February 12, 2025
cc: @MayorBowser pic.twitter.com/ub2Vbpznjf
Aaron Bronson, manager of Out Front Media, told Lead Stories that his company's exclusive contract to sell the Capital Bikeshare station ads ended in April 2024 and the city's transportation department has not found another vendor. The D.C. government is not maintaining the ad spaces, which means "anyone can put anything" without paying, he said. But no one, including USAID, could have bought the ad.
