Musk Repost of Fake ‘USAID Paid Hollywood Stars to Visit Ukraine’ Video Gets 25 Million Hits

Elon Musk, having been appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by US President Donald Trump, launched a social media campaign of accusations and justifications for his attack on USAID, Washington’s foreign assistance agency.

Trump recently told the press that he appreciated “the concept” of USAID but said its staff “turned out to be radical left lunatics.” Trump signed an executive order on Monday to freeze foreign aid and seems determined to drastically cut USAID’s workforce of more than 5,000 foreign service officers, civil servants and personal service contractors down to around 300 “essential” project staff.

In the past week, Musk has made more than 160 posts about USAID and reposted from so-called “verified accounts” such as Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital. The billionaire has 216 million followers, and his repackaging of the theories spread by these sites, along with his own views on USAID, have prompted hundreds of millions of views.

As Kyiv Post reported on Thursday, several fake videos claiming to have been produced by Voice of America, E! News, and France 24 began circulating on social media last week. The videos alleged that USAID had paid huge sums – Angelina Jolie $20 million, Sean Penn $5 million, Jean-Claude Van Damme $1.5 million, Orlando Bloom $8 million, and Ben Stiller $4 million – for them to carry out their visits to Ukraine.

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Even though these accusations were rapidly proven to be fakes, they continued to be shared by numerous social media accounts. These have now transpired to include Musk and Donald Trump Jr.

The independent news site Insider.ru, citing the “Bot Blocker” project, reported on Friday that as a result of these “endorsements,” the video and its subsequent circulation have collected more than 25 million views.

The Kremlin-linked “Matryoshka” bot, which promulgated the fake posts, has boasted that its USAID videos have been its most successful disinformation campaign to date.”