At the end of March 2025, a photograph went viral on the Internet, allegedly showing the entrance to the headquarters of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Some users noticed that the door handles and the lock hanging on them reminded them of the shape of a penis. We have verified the authenticity of the viral image.
The photo was widely distributed both on the RuNet and in the English-speaking segment of the Internet. Telegram channel «The world today with "Yuri Podolyak""(1.8 million views at the time of writing this analysis) shared a post with this photo and this comment (author's spelling and punctuation preserved): "I see that USAID is not just closed! And “Closed, fuck it!!!”” “This is the end))) the situation at the USAID office,” wrote the channel “Sheikh Tamir"(118,000 views, spelling and punctuation are also preserved). Some Internet users notedthat the agency was closed “very symbolically.”
The same photo was shared by Telegram channels “Ax Live"(724,000 views), "Sanya in Florida"(547,000), "Evil proof️"(224,000), "Newsach / Dvach"(206,000), "Ivan Utenkov" (143,000), "ND – News of the day"(122,000), "Banksta"(113,000), etc. The photograph is found in Instagram* and on Reddit, and in X the posts of an American far-right conspiracy theorist went viral Alex Jones (843,000 views) and user DogeDesigner (12.5 million).
The US Agency for International Development was created in 1961 to coordination humanitarian support to other countries. At the end of January 2025, a few days after Donald Trump took office for the second time as President of the United States, almost all American foreign aid programs were suspended. Soon, most USAID employees were either fired or placed on administrative leave, the organization’s website ceased to function fully, and its headquarters in Washington was closed. closed for staff, and the acting head of the agency became Secretary of State Marco Rubio. At the end of March 2025, the Trump administration informed Congress that will reduce Almost all remaining jobs in USAID will be completely closed by September, and some of the agency’s functions will be transferred to the State Department.
The disbandment of USAID is accompanied by numerous false reports and a campaign to discredit it, which involved both American public and political figures (for example, the head of the Department of Government Effectiveness Elon Musk and other members of the Trump administration) and many Russian media. Since the beginning of February 2025 “Verified” dismantled more ten cases misinformation about this agency.
USAID Headquarters located in Washington, DC. The main entrance to this building is noticeably different from the one depicted in the viral photo. For example, there are revolving doors rather than regular doors, and the USAID logo is placed above them rather than on them.
Using a reverse image search, Verified found that the agency's logo was missing from the original photo, which later went viral. The earliest publication with this photo that we could find was posted by Reddit user under the nickname LobsterInYakuze-2113 back on October 3, 2024 - a month before the US presidential election, which Trump won. Later the same user posted photo again, indicating that the photo was taken in Thailand.
In the comments there is a user under the nickname crackred clarifiedthat the place depicted in the photograph is located in Chiang Mai, the largest city in the north of the country, and added that he was also there and took a similar photo (it was published on Reddit February 7, 2023). A similar photo three weeks earlier on the same site posted user KittieRobinson. “Verified” also found several other images of the same doors with a lock hanging on a chain.
We did not find the exact address of the captured location in any of the posts with similar photographs, nor in the comments under them. Since these doors were photographed independently by different people, “Verified” assumed that the desired location was located on one of the main streets of Chiang Mai, and there should probably be some kind of attraction nearby. In addition, in many photographs the road and trees are visible in the reflection of the glass doors. We decided that these conditions were satisfied by four roads forming a square in the very center of the city. Having studied street panoramas using the Google Street View service, we discovered building with those same locked doors. It is located on Mun Mueang Road, near from Pratu Tha Phae - the eastern gate to the old city. Judging by Google Street View, the lock was hung there no later than August 2022. Probably all the photos of those locked doors were taken before the spring of 2023, when the facade of this building was redone and opened cafe Easy Food & Drink (judging by the establishment’s Facebook*, in April 2023).
Apparently, the distribution of the edited photo began in the English-language segment of the Internet, after which the image went viral on the RuNet. The earliest such publication that “Verified” was able to track was posted on March 28 by the above-mentioned user X under the nickname DogeDesigner.
Thus, the viral photo does not show the locked doors of a USAID office in the United States, but the entrance to one of the establishments in the city of Chiang Mai in Thailand. Moreover, the agency’s emblem was added to a photograph taken at least two years ago.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Instagram and Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities and symbols are prohibited in Russia.
Cover photo: social networks
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