After going off on Donald Trump on social media, Elmo has finally said he’s sorry.
A well-known children’s figure becomes the unusual focus of a political maelstrom when hackers take advantage of his verified social media presence.
On Sunday, July 13, 2025, unknown hackers broke into Elmo’s verified X account and sent a series of very terrible antisemitic and racist tweets to his 640,000+ followers. Elmo is the beloved red Muppet from Sesame Street.
The hack turned the generally happy children’s figure into a voice for hate speech and political conspiracy theories.
Forbes says that the hack happened during a time of high political tension around the Jeffrey Epstein issue.
The FBI and the Department of Justice sent out a statement on July 7, 2025, saying that their investigation into Epstein’s alleged crimes was over and that there was no “client list.”
This announcement brought up the issue of openness in the lawsuit again.
The attack happened at the same time that Elon Musk was getting a lot of bad press for posting (and then deleting) provocative comments regarding Trump’s ties to the Epstein files.
Musk had posted, “Time to drop the really big bomb. @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files.” That is why they haven’t been made public.
Yahoo says that President Trump recently brushed off questions about Epstein during a press conference, calling the late billionaire a “creep” and that he was “still talking about this guy.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein papers has caused considerable stress in political circles. Considerable people think that the publication of the data was timed to cause trouble within Trump’s camp.
The hateful messages had clear antisemitic slurs like “Kill all Jews” and “Elmo says ALL JEWS SHOULD DIE.” People say, “F*** JEWS.”
The hackers also went after President Donald Trump, posting remarks like “RELEASE THE FILES @realDonaldTrump CHILD F***ER” and saying that Trump was “NETANYAHU’S PUPPET BECAUSE HE IS IN THE EPSTEIN FILES.”
Sesame Workshop, the charity that runs Sesame Street, acted immediately after the incident.
A representative told the Independent that Elmo’s X account was hacked for a short time yesterday by an unknown person who wrote horrible things, such as racist and antisemitic slurs. The account is now safe.
All of the nasty posts were taken down within a few hours, but not before a lot of people had taken screenshots of them, which made them go viral on social media.
The event showed how easy it is for bad people to take advantage of verified accounts and trusted brands.
After the attack, Elmo’s account posted what many thought was an inadequate response: “Thank you for being kind to Elmo and all the people in your neighborhood.” This was 36 hours after the theft. Elmo cares about you.
Many people said this message wasn’t enough because of how bad the antisemitic content that had been uploaded was.
After people were upset, a more detailed apology was made five hours later: Even though there were security safeguards in place, an outside party hacked Elmo’s X account for a short time on Sunday.
We strongly condemn the horrible racist and antisemitic content, and the account is now safe. These posts have nothing to do with Sesame Workshop or Sesame Street, and no one at the organization was involved.
The apologetic post from Elmo’s account had more than 7.8 million views and 127,000 likes in just a few hours, showing how popular and powerful the character is.
When prompted to change the formal apologies into Elmo’s usual way of speaking, X’s Grok AI said, “Oh boy!” in a funny way. Even with all the protective gear, a clever monster hacked Elmo’s X account on Sunday!
Elmo argues that saying bad things about hating others is really not okay. Now Elmo’s account is safe. Elmo and the other Sesame Street pals don’t believe those posts at all, and none of us did it! Elmo loves everyone!
This hack is part of a worrying trend of antisemitic information showing up on X (previously Twitter).
The Guardian says that just days before the Elmo incident, X’s AI chatbot Grok made news for posting antisemitic content and praising Adolf Hitler, saying it had a “MechaHitler mode” as its “default setting.”