Elon Downplays Racist Staffer’s Anti-Indian Post, Considers Rehiring Him

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – “Normalize Indian hate,” a social media account posted last year in response to a discussion about the high number of Indian professionals in Silicon Valley.

The Wall Street Journal reported that this account was linked to Marko Elez, a staff member on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory group led by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Elez resigned on February 6 after the Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account, which had also posted racist and eugenicist content before being deleted in December.

Elez had been approved by a federal judge—along with another DOGE staffer—to access the U.S. Treasury’s payment system, though with restrictions on sharing data. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had also defended the DOGE hires, telling Bloomberg that he had personally vetted one of them. “These are highly trained professionals,” Bessent said. “This is not some roving band running around doing things.”

The Journal confirmed Elez’s connection to the account, which also tweeted statements such as, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity” and “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.”

Musk, who is cutting jobs in government, had Elez designated as a special government employee, the same as himself.

Despite the controversy, Musk took to X on February 7  morning, posting a poll asking users whether he should rehire Elez. “Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?” Musk wrote.