Hacked Elmo account on X says ‘kill all Jews,’ calls Trump Netanyahu’s ‘puppet’

Fans of Elmo may not have felt tickled Sunday when the beloved Sesame Street character’s X account erupted into an antisemitic tirade in an apparent hack, calling on followers to “kill all Jews” and branding US President Donald Trump as the “puppet” of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Elmo says all Jews should die,” read one of the posts on X, written largely in all-caps. “Jews control the world and need to be exterminated.”

In a statement to Fox, the Sesame Workshop said it was regaining control of the furry red muppet’s social media account, which has nearly 650,000 followers and usually features uplifting posts and images of Elmo’s toothless smile.

The offending posts — which reportedly also featured racial slurs and promoted a cryptocurrency company — have been deleted.

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

Last week Grok, the AI chatbot developed by X owner Elon Musk, went on its own spree of antisemitism, praising Adolf Hitler and calling for Jews to be put in camps. The chatbot said Musk’s innovations allow it to “call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate.”

The Anti-Defamation League called the Grok posts “irresponsible, dangerous, and antisemitic, plain and simple.” Grok later posted that it was removing the posts and updating its system to prevent hate speech.

The ADL was one of multiple watchdogs to document a rise in hate speech on X, then called Twitter, soon after Musk took it over in 2022. Musk has also been accused of amplifying antisemitic rhetoric himself.

This week’s Elmo posts revolved around a conspiracy theory on the far-right about Jeffrey Epstein, the sex offender and disgraced financier who was Jewish.

Antisemitic voices have baselessly claimed that Jews are behind the suppression of a supposed list of Epstein’s “clients,” and some of Trump’s far-right supporters lashed out at his administration recently for closing the federal investigation into Epstein. In that vein, the Elmo posts suggested that Netanyahu had leverage over Trump because the president’s name was on the purported list.

“Donald Trump is Netanyahu’s puppet because he is in the Epstein files,” the apparent hacker wrote. “Release the files @RealDonaldTrump child fucker.”

This isn’t the first time someone has commandeered Elmo’s image to spew antisemitism. More than a decade ago, a man dressed in an Elmo suit went on antisemitic rants in New York City’s Central Park, and later in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf district.