Vice President JD Vance endorsed reinstating a 25-year-old white supremacist inside the Treasury Department, claiming “stupid social media activity” shouldn’t keep him out of high-level federal payment systems.
Marko Elez, an ex-SpaceX employee, stepped down on Thursday from his "DOGE" position — sometime between when a federal judge gave him the green light to continue accessing Treasury payment data and when the Wall Street Journal published an article outlining his history of racist social media posts.
“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” Elez posted along with other racist statements in the weeks before his installation at the Treasury Department, the Journal reported. "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," he posted in another. Elez deleted his X account before taking his post, but the White House announced he stepped down when asked about the posts.
On Friday, DOGE boss and South African billionaire Elon Musk took to X to poll support for reinstating the admitted fan of “eugenic immigration policy." At that point Vance chimed in.
“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,” the veep wrote. “So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.”
Vance did not comment on any of Elez’s specific comments, including his claim last fall that the U.S. needs to “normalize Indian hate." That post came just weeks after Vance, who is married to an Indian-American woman, Usha Vance, joined the Trump ticket.
Not every Trump-Musk supporter is so keen on bringing Elez back.
In a Friday broadcast, Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier said “with caution” that Musk’s staffers should in fact be vetted.
“At least one of those who has been ‘doxxed’ has been flagrantly racist on social media,” Saphier said. “They may be the smartest, they may be good with the calculator, but they need to be good people, too, if they’re working on this."
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