California Rep. Brad Sherman Blames Elon Musk’s X For Why He Was Caught Looking at Naughty Pictures on a Flight

Brad Sherman (photo credit: Ted Soqui for the Associated Press)

Blame it on the algorithm.

That is what Rep. Brad Sherman (D-LA) did, after he was caught looking at naughty pictures of scantily clad women aboard a flight, with the California liberal on Saturday saying it was all the fault of Elon Musk’s X force feeding him the photos.

“This was on Twitter. These pictures came up on ‘For You,'” Sherman told Punchbowl News reporter John Bresnahan, referring to X by its old name. “I must’ve looked at more than 1,000 posts.”

That was an interesting claim, considering the “For You” tab, according to Grok, X’s AI model, “is primarily based on what you’ve shown interest in.” X has a “For You” tab for users, showing posts it believes users will enjoy, and a tab dedicated to other users they follow.

Bresnahan asked Sherman if he had a “problem with pornography” and the Congressman denied it.

“No, I don’t have a problem,” Sherman said. “It’s all about the algorithms.”

His defense comes one day after an X account called “Dear White Staffers” posted several pictures of Sherman looking “at porn on his iPad during a flight,” according to its caption. That post racked up more than 12.6 million views and was shared more than 5,000 times by Saturday afternoon.

The pictures, once zoomed in far enough, show a handful of different women in varying forms of undress; there is no sex or nudity, it appears, but one woman is sticking her tongue out while only wearing a bra in one picture.

Sherman copped to looking at pictures of women who are not his wife, telling Bresnahan, “If I see a picture of a woman, might I look at it longer than a sunset? Yeah.”

The 71-year-old Los Angeles native added you tend to look at “a lot of stuff” when you are on cross country flights. Especially when Musk’s X is sending you racy content, supposedly.