US politician reveals why he was looking at NSFW photos during flight

An American politician has been forced to respond after he was caught looking at racy images of women on his iPad during a flight.

Pictures of Democrat congressman and California Rep. Brad Sherman, 71, have gone viral as they appear to show him viewing explicit images on his tablet while travelling on a plane.

The images in question were posted on Twitter on Friday and appear to show him, with his mouth wide open, looking at what seemed to be pictures of women in their underwear.

As you would expect, the photos quickly racked up millions of views and Americans have rushed to the replies to slam the politician.

The social media user who initially shared the snaps wrote alongside them: "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."

The pictures in question have been seen online millions of times (Twitter/dearwhitetstaff)

As we say, Sherman has since come forward to defend himself in an interview with Punchbowl News and denied he was looking at pornography.

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

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

The politician said that the images simply appeared on his feed while he was in the air 'because of the algorithms' as he was browsing the 'For You' section.

He also threw in a cheeky dig at Elon Musk, while admitting that looking at the pictures on the flight wasn't 'appropriate'.

Sherman added: “Is it pornography? I don’t think Elon Musk thinks so. Is it appropriate? No."

After the photos drew widespread attention, even the White House got involved, with Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, writing on social media: "Bruh. What a total gooner."

Sherman denied he was looking at pornography and said the photos came up because of the 'algorithm'

Donald Trump Jr, 47, also shared the viral photos, alongside the caption: "Yikes!!!!," to which Sherman hit back with: "#ReleaseTheEpsteinFiles."

He also responded to Cheung with the same message, penning: "Bruh. Release the #EpsteinFiles."

Meanwhile, others jokingly chimed in with: "I’m over here wondering how he got access to 150% brightness" and "Thanks. I’m gonna have nightmares now."

Another person asked: "How does a US Congressman not have a privacy screen?"

While someone else agreed: "With the screen brightness ALL the way up. Not an ounce of shame."

Defending him, someone else chimed in with: "It’s almost impossible to scroll X without it coming across your feed. Even when I click 'show less content like this' many times over years, it still comes up sometimes."