In case it wasn’t obvious, no, that’s not the real Elmo that posted racist and antisemitic posts on Elon Musk’s X. Someone hacked into the Sesame Street character’s X account.
On Sunday, Elmo’s official account published several abusive posts, since removed. It’s not clear how the account was compromised, but the nonprofit Sesame Workshop said it was “working to restore full control of the account.”
The account also called on the Trump administration to release files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, which President Trump has sought to downplay.
At the time of writing, Elmo’s hacked X account still links to a Telegram channel, which in an earlier post referenced what seemed to be a crypto scam.
It’s the latest high-profile account to have been hacked since Musk’s takeover of the site, formerly Twitter, in 2022, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, OpenAI, and Donald Trump Jr.
Musk’s AI company xAI apologized last week after its Grok chatbot posted antisemitic memes and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. Musk himself performed a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration.
