On Thursday, a 25-year-old staffer for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) abruptly resigned after the Wall Street Journal asked the White House to comment on incredibly racist social media posts he appeared to have made shortly before joining the team.

Marko Elez, an inexperienced recent university grad and former X employee, had been infiltrating the US Treasury's payments system. Despite Trump administration officials maintaining that he was limited to "read-only" access to the system, Wired reported this week that he was in fact able to make extensive changes under the hood.

Naturally, the optics of a green operative with incredible access to the government's most sensitive payments, combined with revelations of overt and ugly racism look incredibly bad.

But instead of taking accountability for the terrible hire, Musk has found a new target: the Wall Street Journal reporter who dug up the racist posts.

In a tweet responding to a Musk loyalist calling out WSJ reporter Katherine Long, the mercurial entrepreneur raged this morning that "she should be fired immediately."

In a separate tweet, he called her out for being a "disgusting and cruel person," without offering any evidence.

The attack highlights Musk's well-documented hatred for the media, which has steadfastly reported on his companies' shortcomings, personal vendettas, and embracing of far-right extremism. Since he took over Twitter, Musk's social media platform has repeatedly suspended journalists, an apparent effort to silence his many critics.

That's all despite claiming Musk claiming to be a "free speech absolutist," which in retrospect is absolutely laughable.

In case there's any doubt, the things the own 25-year-old staffer tweeted out were absolutely revolting.

Elez was behind a deleted profile that backed a "eugenic immigration policy" and argued that "you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity," according to Long's reporting.

"Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," he reportedly wrote on a separate account last summer.

Among other things, Long's reporting highlights glaring oversights in Musk's hiring practices. His team of 20-something DOGE boys aren't just immensely underqualified for the job, but many of them have a colorful past like Elez.

Elez's abrupt resignation also came as revelations were coming out that he had been making alterations to the US Treasury's payments system, which paid out a gargantuan $5.45 trillion in 2024.

The blog Talking Points Memo reported this week that Elez had made "extensive changes" to the system before his write access was revoked on February 5. Whether he lost those privileges because of an ongoing lawsuit aimed at Musk and Elez is unclear.

Musk has long outed himself as sharing similar beliefs to Elez's, making plenty of unabashedly racist comments in the past.

Musk also has a long track record of making personal attacks aimed at people who don't share his worldview —and now that he's been handed the keys to the government, those personal vendettas are taking an even uglier shape.

More on Musk: Elon's DOGE Boy Who "Resigned" Was Apparently Doing Something Very Naughty With the Treasury's Code


Share This Article