The New York Post said on Thursday that it had been “hacked,” after its website and Twitter account published headlines advocating the assassination of Democrat politicians, including US President Joe Biden. The alleged hackers also wrote headlines featuring racism and rape threats.
“The New York Post has been hacked,” the paper tweeted. “We are currently investigating the cause.”
Shortly before the message, a number of bizarre stories began to appear on the Post’s website and Twitter account.
Headlines claimed that New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, a Republican, had called Mayor Eric Adams a “fried chicken eating monkey,” and threatened to rape his rival, incumbent Governor Kathy Hochul.
Fake stories claimed that Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he would “order Border Patrol to start slaughtering illegals,” and that ‘anti-woke’ activist Chris Rufo declared “we must destroy and imprison Union teachers.”
Meanwhile, an unattributed headline simply read “we must assassinate [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] for America,” and an op-ed supposedly written by Post columnist Miranda Devine stated, “We must murder Joe and Hunter Biden.”
A real New York Post story from September about a man who “shoved [an] 8-inch deodorant can up his butt, left it there for 3 weeks” was edited to feature a photo of Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a prominent Republican critic of former President Donald Trump.
The stories under some of the headlines were unrelated, suggesting that those responsible had simply accessed the newspaper’s content management system and edited only the headings. The stories may have been automatically posted to Twitter following the changes.
The offensive headlines were quickly removed from the Post’s website and Twitter feed.