Elon Musk, JD Vance want to reinstate ex-DOGE staffer linked with ‘Normalise

Marko Elez, one of the appointees at Treasury connected to DOGE, resigned from his post over his link with a now-deleted social media account that advocated racism and eugenics. The exit of the staffer who was granted restricted access to a $5 trillion Treasury payment system has created quite a controversy, with many urging for his reinstatement. Amid this row, shares from DOGE head Elon Musk and US vice president JD Vance have attracted people’s attention. While the tech billionaire started a poll on X to see if people wanted Elez back, the VP posted that a “stupid social media activity” shouldn’t “ruin a kid’s life.”

What are the racist posts about Indians?

According to the Wall Street Journal, an account linked with Elez shared “Normalise Indian hate” on social media. On a separate occasion another racist post from the profile was shared that read, “99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys.”

Elon Musk and JD Vance’s X posts:

Elon Musk started a poll and wrote, “Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?” with two options “Yes” and “No”. At the time of writing this report, 78% of people had voted “Yes.”

JD Vance reposted Musk’s poll while sharing his 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,” he wrote. “So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that,” he added.

What else did the account post?

The outlet reported that once a post on marriage and ethnicity was shared from the account. “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” it read. Reportedly, it also shared social media posts like, “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.”

Wall Street Journal found that the deleted posts were shared from an account with username @nullllptr, which was later deleted. The account was previously called @marko_elez. The outlet further reviewed the deleted posts and accounts and found that the user also described that they were working at SpaceX and Starlink.

Marko Elez graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in computer science. As a sophomore, he founded Unimetrics.io, which acted as a bridge between high schoolers and mentors who could help them with their college applications. He later joined Musk and worked with him at SpaceX and X.