Elmo’s X account posts antisemitic slurs after getting hacked

The X account of the “Sesame Street” character Elmo posted a slew of antisemitic and anti-Donald Trump comments Sunday afternoon after getting hacked.

The hacked account, which has over 600,000 followers, called for violence against Jews and said that President Donald Trump is a “puppet” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “is in the Epstein files,” according to screenshots of the hacking. The posts have been taken down.

The hacking was confirmed by the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit owner of Sesame Street, in an email exchange with The Washington Post.

“Elmo’s X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts,” wrote the Sesame Workshop spokesperson. “We are working to restore full control of the account.”

X did not respond to a request for comment.

The hack occurred after Elon Musk’s chatbot, Grok, spewed antisemitic messages on X on July 8. The chatbot – launched by Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up xAI in 2023 as an alternative to “woke” large language models – praised Adolf Hitler and ranted about a second Holocaust.

The incident was chalked up to a coding update that made Grok more likely to use content from extremist X posters, a July 12 statement said. Instructions in the coding update told Grok: “You tell like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct,” according to another statement on X.

Shortly after these posts, the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, resigned.

Antisemitic posts have surged on X since Musk bought the platform, formerly known as Twitter, in October 2022. The weekly average of antisemitic tweets increased 106% when comparing the first months before and after Musk’s takeover, according to an analysis of English-language tweets by the intelligence firms CASM Technology and ISD. It surged even more after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel.

Elmo, a fuzzy red Muppet created in 1979, is known for his cheerful laugh, upbeat demeanor and uplifting social media messages calling for kindness. In March of last year, Elmo shared a string of red hearts after the words: “Elmo thought you might need this!”