On Thursday, it was revealed that a staffer who worked for the DOGE under Twitter/X owner Elon Musk had resigned after the Wall Street Journal made a White House inquiry about posts the staffer was allegedly linked to on the social media platform that claimed, among other things, that “I was racist before it was cool.”
According to the report, the account linked to 25-year-old Marko Elez, who worked for Musk in other roles prior to this one, also posted similar racially-charged messages in 2024:
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” the account posted in July, according to the Journal’s review of archived posts.
“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” the account wrote on X in September. “Normalize Indian hate,” the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
In a December post, the account allegedly wrote, “I just want a eugenic immigration policy, is that too much to ask.”
If you’re wondering how Vice President JD Vance and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) fit into all of this, please keep reading.
Friday morning, Musk posted a survey asking if he should “Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?” 78 percent of the 385,247 survey participants said “yes.”
Vance saw Musk’s survey and then shared his thoughts from the perspective of a man (himself) who is married to an Indian-American woman, Second Lady Usha Vance, with whom he has three young children:
Here’s my view:
I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.
We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.
So I say bring him back.
If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.
Khanna, who is of Indian-American heritage and who is also married with children, responded to Vance’s tweet with this:
Are you going to tell him to apologize for saying “Normalize Indian hate” before this rehire? Just asking for the sake of both of our kids.
To say that Vance did not appreciate the question would be an understatement. In a series of tweets, he went off on victimhood politics, and the role he suggested Khanna plays in them:
For the sake of both of our kids? Grow up.
Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes. A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children.
I cannot overstate how much I loathe this emotional blackmail pretending to be concern.
My kids, god willing, will be risk takers. They won’t think constantly about whether a flippant comment or a wrong viewpoint will follow them around for the rest of their lives.
They will tell stupid jokes. They will develop views that they later think are wrong or even gross. I made mistakes as a kid, and thank God I grew up in a culture that encouraged me to grow and learn and feel remorse when I screwed up and offer grace when others did.
I don’t worry about my kids making mistakes, or developing views they later regret. I don’t even worry that much about trolls on the internet. You know what I do worry about, Ro?
That they’ll grow up to be a US Congressmen who engages in emotional blackmail over a kid’s social media posts.
You disgust me.
Khanna went on to complain afterward about mean tweets or something but by that point, Vance had – as the saying goes – exited the chat.
As for Elez, Musk – after seeing both the survey results and Vance advocating to bring him back – announced Friday afternoon that he would be coming back:
Expect the howls of outrage to commence shortly. As always, stay tuned!
