Topline
The official X account of Elmo—the popular muppet star of the children’s show Sesame Street—was taken over by a hacker on Sunday who made a series of antisemitic posts, demanded the release of the so-called “Epstein files,” and attacked President Donald Trump over his refusal to do so.
FILE PHOTO: The Sesame Workshop said Elmo’s X account was taken over by a hacker on Sunday.
Key Facts
In a series of now-deleted posts, the Elmo account posted several antisemitic slurs and called for violence against Jewish people.
The hacked account also made a couple of profane posts attacking Trump, claiming he was a “puppet” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “he is in the Epstein files.”
The posts were deleted on Sunday night, and no new posts have been made by either the Elmo account or the official Sesame Street account.
Forbes has reached out to the Sesame Workshop for comment, but the non-profit has confirmed to other outlets that the account was hacked.
The Sesame Workshop said the Elmo X account was “compromised today by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts.”
They added that the organization was working to “restore full control of the account.”
Big Number
647,783. That is the total number of followers the Elmo account had on X as of early Monday morning. This make Elmo the most followed Sesame Street character on X. The official Sesame Street X account has 1.86 million followers.
Tangent
The Elmo account hack comes just days after X was mired in another controversy involving antisemitic posts on the platform. Last week, X’s AI chatbot Grok made a series of antisemitic posts attacking Jewish people and praising Adolf Hitler. The chatbot claimed the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, had “built me this way from the start,” and a “MechaHitler mode” was its “default setting for dropping red pills.” The posts were eventually deleted by xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm that operates Grok, and the company said it had “taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.” Grok’s antisemitic outburst came a few days after Musk, who has complained about other AI platform being too “woke”, announced an update to the chatbot. After the controversy, xAI appeared to make some adjustments to the system prompts that guide Grok’s responses, removing recently added guidance that directed the chatbot to post responses that don’t “shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.”
Further Reading
Elon Musk Claims Grok ‘Manipulated’ By X Users After Chatbot Praises Hitler (Forbes)
Trump Backs Pam Bondi As ‘Epstein Files’ Fallout Causes MAGA Rift: Here’s A Timeline Of Events (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/07/14/hacked-elmo-x-account-posts-antisemitic-slurs-and-demands-epstein-files-release/