Donald Trump (left) agrees with JD Vance on the stance of bringing back Marko Elez, Elon Musk's (right) DOGE key staffer. Representational image.
'Normalize Indian Hate': Elon Musk rehires DOGE key staff despite racist tweets
How late is too late? Elon Musk's core DOGE staffer resigns over racist tweets posted less than a year ago against Indians propagating eugenicist ideology.
A long-time employee of Elon Musk, 25-year-old Marko Elez, who worked in SpaceX and Starlink and a key member of the newly formed DOGE - Department of Government Efficiency under Donald Trump’s administration, resigned over a slew of racist and eugenic tweets with the hatred directed particularly at Indian software engineers.
Elez has had no prior experience working in the government but was designated as a special government employee with access to the US Treasury Department’s highly sensitive payment systems. His account @nullllptr was deleted in December, and went by the username @marko_elez upon observing archived posts, according to a Wall Street Journal article.
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Elon Musk aims to rehire Marko Elez
According to a report by Wired, Elez gave himself 'read' and 'write' privileges to the US government’s entire payment system, allowing him to change the code which could lead to security issues and leave it vulnerable to cyber attacks. A federal judge ruled on Thursday that Elez’s access to payment records would be ‘read only’, confirming the ex-DOGE staffer’s prior unchecked access to the payment systems.
In response to his resignation, US Vice president JD Vance took to the social platform ‘X’ expressing that what Elez did was merely “stupid social media activity” quoting a tweet by Elon Musk where he asked his followers in a poll, “Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?”
The poll received 78% of an affirmative 'Yes' to bring back Marko Elez with only 22% saying 'No'. Musk quoted JD Vance’s tweet saying, “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine.”
Some of Marko Elez’s tweets which are barely a year old were filled with racist vitriol such as, “Normalize Indian hate,” referencing the rise of Indians in the Silicon Valley, according to the WSJ. Other tweets include “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” and “99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys,” posted in December of last year.
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JD Vance doubles down on his earlier statement
This revelation of a staffer’s racist and eugenicist views prior to working in the US White House comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the USAID, United States Agency for International Development that is being heavily contested by labour groups and government workers as it would retain less than 300 employees and halt critical humanitarian operations around the world.
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Vice President JD Vance did not seem to take the racist vitriol posted by Marko Elez seriously as he publicly told Indian Congressman Ro Khanna to “Grow up,” on X, in response to Khanna asking Vance if Elez would be held accountable and made to apologise for his racism towards Indians. Vance doubled down on his stance and said that although what online trolls say is “offensive” it does not threaten his or Khanna’s children.