by: MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press
Posted: Feb 7, 2025 / 03:00 PM EST
Updated: Feb 7, 2025 / 03:00 PM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance said Friday that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency should rehire a staff member who resigned after he was linked to social media posts that espoused racism, with President Donald Trump later endorsing his vice president’s view.
Marko Elez resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal linked the 25-year-old DOGE staffer to a deleted social media account on X that posted last year, “I was racist before it was cool” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” among other posts.
The account in September included a post that said, “Normalize Indian hate.” The vice president’s wife, Usha Vance, is the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Vance, in a post on Musk-owned X, said Elez should be brought back and blamed “journalists who try to destroy people.”
“I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance said.
“I’m with the vice president,” Trump told a news conference Friday.
The vice president said Elez should be fired “if he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team.”
Vance’s posts came after Musk in another social media post began polling his followers on whether he should bring back Elez.
The White House on Friday confirmed Elez resigned but did not answer a question about whether he had been asked to rejoin DOGE.
Elez did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday.
Elez was among two DOGE employees who were at the center of a controversy this week when they accessed the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, prompting a court challenge and a judge’s decision to restrict their access.
In its report, The Wall Street Journal found a since-deleted account under the handle @nullllptr with a user described as an employee at SpaceX and Starlink, two of Musk’s companies. The account previously went by the username @marko_elez.
Elez, in archives of his personal website, said he worked for SpaceX and on its Starlink satellites, and at X.
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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C. contributed to this report.
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