STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Not A Real Ad

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: As Capital Bikeshare, the owner of the bike stand ad box, stopped selling ads in April 2024 it would be an unauthorized posting, according to the person who was last in charge of selling the ads. Artist Winston Tseng, known for creating similar fake political ads, appeared to take credit for this one on his Instagram account.

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 was able to locate the spot where this photo was taken, 5th St & Massachusetts Ave NW in Washington DC and determined it showed a Capital Bikeshare bike stand. The snow on the bikes matched the level of snow at another such bike stand photographed on February 11, 2025.

(Source: Google Streetview screenshot taken on Thu Feb 13 8:25:09 2025 UTC)

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R- North Carolina, posted to X a video of himself in front of the ad box, where he stated it was at "400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW" (which is about 500 feet from the spot). Here is his post (archived here):

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.

cc: @MayorBowser pic.twitter.com/ub2Vbpznjf

-- Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) February 12, 2025

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.

The mystery of who created the fake ad appeared to be solved on February 13, 2025 when artist Winston Tseng posted this on his Instagram account:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Winston Tseng (@winstontseng)

Lead Stories reached out to Teng and will update this article when we receive a reply.

We previously wrote about two other Tseng fake political ads, also appearing as posters in streetside kiosks:

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