'To err is human': Elon Musk reinstates Doge staffer who resigned over racist posts, VP Vance comes in support

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Friday that he will reinstate a staffer of his self-styled “Department of Government Efficiency” (Doge) unit who resigned after he was linked to racist posts on his social media accounts. In a post on, formerly known as Twitter, Musk said that 25-year-old Marko Elez “will be brought back.” Elez came to the limelight after he was at the centre of a court battle over Doge’s access to the US government’s payment system. He has also worked for Musk’s SpaceX in the past.

“To err is human, to forgive divine,” Musk wrote in his post. Elez garnered backlash after it was found that he was the owner of a now-deleted account that boasted of racist beliefs and advocated eugenics, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” read a post on the said X account, @nullllptr, last July. In September, the same account shared another post saying: “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”

In a separate post, responding to another user’s comments on the rise of Indians in Silicon Valley, the controversial account wrote: “Normalize Indian hate.” Musk’s statement to bring him back came after he conducted a poll and asked X users whether he should reinstate him. In response to Musk’s question, US Vice President JD Vance came out in the staffer’s support.

‘He is a kid’: Vance

In his post, the vice president referred to Elez as a “kid” whose life was being “destroyed” by journalism. “Here’s my 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,” wrote Vance, whose wife, Usha, is of Indian origin. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. 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. When asked about firing at a press conference, US President Donald Trump said that he is not aware of the particulars, “but if the vice-president said that … I’m with the vice-president”. Meanwhile, 385,247 users voted in Musk’s poll with 78 per cent of them demanding that he should be brought back.

The vice president had a war of words with California Representative Ro Khanna over the issue. Khanna, who is of Indian descent, replied to Vance’s post, asking the vice president if he would ask Elez to apologize for the racist posts. “Are you going to tell him to apologize for saying ‘Normalize Indian hate’ before this rehire? Just asking for the sake of both of our kids,” Khanna said Friday on X.

Vance responded to the tweet saying: “For the sake of both of our kids? Grow up.” “Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids. Do you know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes. A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children," he added.