Politician spotted looking at X-rated photos during flight admits why

A politician who was spotted looking at X-rated photos on a flight has given his reason why they were on his screen.

Someone took a picture of US politician Brad Sherman, 71, looking at his iPad while he was on a plane, and the images on the screen were of women in bikinis.

Sharing the image to social media, they wrote: "Why did California Congressman Brad Sherman feel it was appropriate to look at porn on his iPad during a flight today?"

Even the White House got in on the criticism, with communications director Steven Cheung saying 'Bruh. What a total gooner' and others saying they didn't think he should be looking at those sorts of things on a plane.

Firing back at the White House comment, Sherman quoted the message and said: "Bruh. Release the Epstein Files."

71-year-old Brad Sherman was called out for what was on his screen during a flight (David Crane/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)

Explaining why he had those images on his screen, Sherman told Punchbowl News he had not been looking at porn on the flight and didn't have a problem with it, instead saying he was on X (Twitter) and these images had come up while he was browsing the 'For You' section.

He said: "This was on Twitter. These pictures came up on ‘For You.’ I must’ve looked at more than 1000 posts."

When asked if he thought the images on his screen were porn, he said he didn't think it was appropriate for people to be looking at X-rated images on planes, but added 'Is it pornography? I don’t think Elon Musk thinks so'.

"If I see a picture of a woman, might I look at it longer than a sunset? Yeah," he told the outlet, before adding, "If you have to fly across the country, you look at a lot of stuff on your tablet."

The 'For You' section on X is a feed of content selected by an algorithm, which contains a mixture of posts from accounts a person follows and ones they don't.

This was his response (X/@BradSherman)

This means posts which X thinks are 'popular' or 'relevant' can crop up there without anyone searching for them or following the account that posted them.

A fairly common criticism of the 'For You' section from people is that a lot of the content it puts on a feed isn't really for them, and they don't like what it serves up.

As far as the politician is concerned, he was scrolling social media while on a flight, and the algorithm put those images on his screen rather than him going to look for them.