Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) landed in an awkward situation on a recent flight when a fellow passenger caught him scrolling through pictures of scantily clad women on his iPad, and his response was… well… not good.
The congressman, with his screen brightness blazing, was photographed with his mouth hanging open while staring at the provocative photos. The images went viral after being posted to X, where the original poster wondered why Sherman thought this kind of behavior belonged on a plane.
Why did California Congressman Brad Sherman feel it was appropriate to look at porn on his iPad during a flight today? His district deserves better representation than this!! #CA32 pic.twitter.com/gAYZ82tyr2
— Dear White Staffers (@dearwhitestaff) November 14, 2025
The twist is that a left-wing account first exposed Sherman. Why did a left-wing account post the photos? Well, a look at his account makes it clear that the account holder thinks Sherman is too pro-Israel.
When Punchbowl News reporter John Bresnahan confronted Sherman about the incident, the congressman rolled out a laughable defense.
He blamed Elon Musk.
No, really.
He insisted the pictures appeared in his “For You” feed on X, as though the platform held his eyelids open and made him stare. He claimed he scrolled through more than a thousand posts during the flight and blamed the algorithm for steering those images his way.
“Do you have a problem with pornography?” Bresnahan asked.
“No, I don’t have a problem,” Sherman told him.
But still, there’s a massive problem with Sherman’s explanation. X’s algorithm feeds users content based on what they’ve been interacting with. If someone engages with political content, they get more politics. If someone spends time viewing accounts posting suggestive images, the algorithm will show them more of that content. So those pictures didn’t just materialize in Sherman’s feed out of nowhere. They showed up because his own browsing habits trained the algorithm. My own “For You” feed reflects what I actually look at on the platform — politics and technology posts — and that’s how the system works.
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By the end of the interview, Sherman’s denials had grown weaker. He offered one last attempt at justification, saying that if you have to fly across the country, you end up looking at a lot of material on your tablet.
“If I see a picture of a woman, might I look at it longer than a sunset? Yeah,” he admitted.
Sherman eventually conceded the behavior wasn’t appropriate for an airplane.
“Is it pornography? I don’t think Elon Musk thinks so,” he said. “Is it appropriate? No.”
2/ Sherman denied repeatedly that he was looking or pornography or has a problem with pornography.
Sherman said these photos came up in “Twitter feed” under the “For You” heading
— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) November 15, 2025
The images of Sherman looking at the photos are unsettling in their own right, showing the 71-year-old congressman with his mouth hanging open as he gawked at his screen. The images may technically not have been pornographic, but for someone elected to serve the public, getting caught like this raises serious questions about judgment and basic awareness that no algorithm can solve for him.
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