Musk Rehires Racist-Tweet Staffer After Trump and Vance Back His Comeback
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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla, X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. I'm your host, Will Walden. Will one of Doge employees, Marco Elez, really get his job back after resigning over doing racist tweets?

But also, why did Vice President J.D. Vance and President Donald Trump push for his rehiring after those tweets were shown? And what does this say about how the administration views past online behavior? Now, Elon Musk announced Friday that Marco Ales, a former staffer at the Department of Government Efficiency, will be rehired after resigning from a Treasury Department post due to the exposure of tweets promoting racism and eugenics.

Musk made the decision following a public endorsement from Vice President J.D. Vance and support from President Donald Trump.

Now, Elez stepped down on Thursday after the Wall Street Journal questioned the White House about his connection to an ex-account that had posted inflammatory remarks. And within hours, Elon Musk conducted a poll on ex asking whether Elez should be reinstated at Doge. And by Friday morning, the poll had gathered more than 385,000 votes with 78% of his return in favor.

So Vance was among those who publicly backed Les, responding to Musk's poll by arguing that past social media activity should not permanently ruin someone's career. He said, "Here's my view. I obviously disagree with some of Les' posts, but I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life. We shouldn't reward journalists who destroy people ever."

Now, Trump, when asked about the situation during a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister, did not comment directly on the past remarks, but aligned himself with his vice president. He said, well, I don't know about that particular thing, but if the vice president said that, did you say that? I'm with the vice president.

Now, Oles 25 had been working as part of DOGE, which is a team assembled by Donald Trump to reduce federal spending and cut the government workforce. And before his resignation, he had recently been approved by a federal judge to access the U.S. Treasury's payment system. The same judge placed restrictions on how Oles and other DOGE staffers could share data from that system.

Now, criticism of the past statements from Melez intensified after the Wall Street Journal reported on multiple tweets from an account linked to him. One post from September read, you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity. Another from the same month stated, normalize Indian hate in response to a discussion about the prominence of Indian professionals in Silicon Valley.

now the revelations prompted a heated exchange between vance and representative rokhana democrat from california who questioned whether les should apologize before being rehired saying are you going to tell him to apologize for saying normalize indian hate before this rehire kata who's indian-american asked vance on x just asking for the sake of both of our kids

Now, Vance, whose wife is Indian American, dismissed Khanna's concerns. He said, grow up. Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don't threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes. A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children. And in a follow-up post, Vance added, you disgust me.

Now, the controversy surrounding Les comes amid a broader push by the Trump administration to reshape key government agencies. Since taking office, Trump has removed Democratic commissioners from the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He has also replaced officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Now, we're going to tie all this together in a little bit, but we're going to stop to take a break from one of our sponsors. But before we do that, even, I want to tell you about a weird statistic that I've noticed in the back end here on Spotify and on Apple podcasts that of all the people that listen to the show, and there's tens of thousands of you every month, 100,000 of you every month, the fact that only about 50% of you

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Ales, who previously worked for X and SpaceX, has been part of a group of young consultants brought into Doge. Energy Secretary Chris Wright addressing concerns about Doge staffers being given sensitive government access defended their role, saying the government is old and maybe a little bit stodgy. That's what they said in an interview Friday with CNBC. We've got some young kids, think young gun management consultants, coming in to take a critical look at how things are run.

And reports have surfaced that a Doge staffer was granted access to the Energy Department's IT system, fueling concerns over security protocols. However, Wright dismissed such worries. They said, I've heard these rumors. They're like seeing our nuclear secrets. None of that is true at all. They don't have security clearances. Now, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant also commented on the role of Doge staffers in his department.

Speaking with Bloomberg on Thursday, Bessent confirmed that he had personally vetted one of the two Treasury employees from Musk's Doge team. Though he did not specify if Eliza was among them, he said, "These are highly trained professionals. This is not some roving band running around doing things." And the situation surrounding Eliza's resignation and reinstatement is added to the ongoing debate over accountability for past online behavior.

Social media posts included statements beyond those targeting specific ethnic groups. One post from last summer read, "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool." Another, which was a few weeks earlier, stated, "I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the earth." Now, Musk's decision to reinstate Ales marks another instance of the billionaire using X polls to influence personal decisions.

Musk has previously polled users on whether to reinstate banned accounts on X, including that of Trump after a suspension in the aftermath of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. By the time Musk declared that Les would be rehired, the debate had already escalated into a broader discussion about political loyalty, media scrutiny, and forgiveness.

Now, whether the reinstatement will be the end of this controversy remains to be seen. There's a lot of work going on with Elon Musk and Doge in all departments of the government.

We'll see how much money they can strip out, see how much money they can save America, and also if they can save it by doing it legally. There are going to be some lawsuits in the near future, and we will bring you all of that information if you subscribe. So thanks again for subscribing.

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