Republicans got outplayed by Sesame Street's Elmo — and critics won't let them forget it

President Donald Trump and his supporters are trying to claim the “Sesame Street” puppet Elmo as one of their own — but online commenters are not allowing them to get away with it.

“The GOP has been faced with their anti-Elmo history after trying to welcome him into the MAGA fold,” reported The Daily Beast's Katie Francis on Sunday. The story began with Elmo declaring, regarding the ongoing World Cup soccer event, that “Elmo loves you, and Elmo loves you, and Elmo loves you, and Team USA, and everybody who’s playing." Yet Elmo then concluded, “Elmo just wants to set the record straight... GO TEAM USA!”

He also clarified, “Just to be clear, Elmo wants Team USA to win, okay? But Elmo loves everybody!”

Notably, the Muppet predicted that his preference for Team USA might be exploited when he asked viewers to not “make this a thing.” Yet despite this warning, House Republicans quickly posted the video with the comment that "Elmo is a certified PATRIOT!”

They then added, “Meanwhile, Democrats are rooting for foreigners...”

What the House Republicans neglected to acknowledge was that Trump and his supporters have fiercely criticized “Sesame Street” and the TV station PBS for its supposedly “woke” culture. Social media users on X quickly reminded them of these facts.

“You clowns literally defunded elmo,” one person posted.

“You a-----es voted to defund PBS and called Sesame Street woke,” another wrote. “You couldn’t be more hypocritical, loud, wrong, or clueless.”

Trump’s vendetta against “Sesame Street” may be personal as well as ideological. Last year The Daily Beast reported that after the president signed an executive order to immediately halt all federal funding to PBS, “almost immediately, people began to suspect that Trump’s vendetta against the network wasn’t because of its 'woke programming.' Instead, it’s all to do with a certain puppet show that has been trolling the man since the ’80s.”

Ronald Grump was a periodic but long-running spoof of the then-hotel magnate that began in the 1980s, as The Daily Beast reported. With song lyrics like “he’s got so much trash it spills out of his can,” locations like “Grump Tower” and occupations like “famous Grouch builder,” Ronald Grump was an undisputed antagonist who tried to do nefarious things like force Oscar the Grouch to give up his garbage can (where he lives) and pave over all of “Sesame Street” so he can turn it into “Grump World.”

After Trump became a reality TV star, the spoofing continued. In a later episode, “Sesame Street” mocked Trump’s NBC reality show “The Apprentice.”

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