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Donald Trump‘s administration has fully embraced whiplash as a tactic. It’s backpedaling as far as the eye can see, with executive orders signed and discarded, independent watchdogs fired left and right only to be brought back, and now, even virulent racists have found purchase in high-ranking government positions.
Tesla mogul turned unofficial government employee Elon Musk took to his social media platform X.com on February 7 to ask random people on the internet whether or not Marko Elez, a DOGE staffer who resigned after The Washington Post unearthed racist tweets, should still have a place in the government. No, we’re not kidding; that’s the state of politics in America at the moment, and our vice president, JD Vance, is more than happy to yet again walk back his statements to please his bosses.
Elez is a 25-year-old software engineer. His offending tweets are from a few months ago, and the self-proclaimed racist has been speed-running the offensive speech Olympics — though he’s deleted his account in the wake of his resignation. The DOGE staffer worked for Musk’s companies SpaceX and X.com and is part of the team gutting programs like USAID, and is looking to do the same to Medicare and Medicaid.
As DOGE cuts millions of dollars from subsidies and the government prepares to cut a workforce of 10,000 down to a handful of staffers, rehiring a racist should be the last priority. But less than 4 days after Elez tendered his resignation, Musk hired him back on. That X poll swung 76% in favor of rehiring — despite the vitriolic things Elez posted. A top commenter told Musk to “have a talk to [him] about the racist stuff. Not cool.” Musk replied, “True.”
Though the tweets are gone, the internet’s memory is long. While groups not targeted by Elez’s hate didn’t find a problem with “giving a kid a second chance,” we have to wonder how they would feel if instead of writing, “Normalize Indian hate,” back in September, Elez had instead directed the tweet at white people. Just a few months before, he wrote, “I would not mind at all if both Gaza and Israel were wiped off the face of the Earth.”
“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” he wrote in September 2024.
The conversation sent shivers down the spine of Vance’s detractors, who dug up some biting words the VP had for Biden FCC pick, Gigi Sohn. Sohn was denied her promotion after posting several damning tweets, such as implying that Fox News was dangerous to democracy, and complaining about ICE having access to data the organization shouldn’t. During one of her three hearings, Vance called her out, “You talk about racial issues in a way that will inflame the very worst things in our country.”
In the wake of the Elez conversation Vance had nothing to say about the hate directed at Indians, an ethnic group his wife Usha is very much a part of. Instead, he focused on how “stupid social media activity shouldn’t ruin a kids life.” Ah yes, a just stupid kid who should be given access to every single American’s sensitive data.
There is no doubt that people can change, but a 25-year-old definitely knows those posts weren’t okay — and his use of a pseudonym shows that he knew this shouldn’t be connected back to him. If people who have dedicated their lives to the public sector can be disqualified from positions simply for having opinions, then there is no place for racist opinions at the highest level, especially when the racists in question aren’t technically a part of the government. At the end of the day, Musk can hire — or fire—anyone he wants in his company, but the rest of us should be leery about his ready acceptance of a man who in July of 2024 wrote, “I was racist before it was cool.”
There is a difference between saying something uncouth and walking it back, saying something ignorant then apologizing, and reveling in being a deplorable person. Our country’s free speech laws are some of the best in the world, and I wouldn’t change that for anything, but our safeguard to keeping people like Elez out of positions that will allow them to attack those groups they openly hate on, is knowing that this behavior should put them out of a job.
By rehiring Elez, Musk has shown everyone that in Trump’s America, it doesn’t matter who you hate or how loudly you profess it. “To err is human,” Musk wrote on X.com after rehiring Elez, “to forgive is divine.” All that matters to Musk is the bottom line, and people who don’t care if millions of humans are “wiped off the face of the Earth” will find it faster.