Marko Elez, is a 25-year-old software engineer who was retained by Elon Musk to work on the staff of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He resigned on Thursday after it was revealed that he had made racist remarks in a now-deleted social media account with Twitter/X. Some samples include the assertion that “I was racist before it was cool,” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” He also wrote, “Normalize Indian hate,” in relation to the large Indian-American population of Silicon Valley, California. These tweets were not ancient history. They were made in June and September of 2024, during the heart of the presidential campaign.
On Friday, the vice-president of the United States, J.D. Vance, argued that Mr. Elez should be reinstated, writing on X/Twitter that “I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.” Mind you, Elez isn’t a kid and “was one of the two individuals associated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency given “read only” access to sensitive taxpayer information from the Treasury Department.”
J.D. Vance’s wife Usha is an Indian-American who was born and raised in California. They have three children, named Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel. They are obviously half-Indian American. But J.D. isn’t interested in defending his family.
Vice President Vance and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) sparred on social media platform X over the proposed rehiring of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer who resigned after his racist social media posts came to light…
…Khanna, who is of Indian descent, replied to Vance’s post, asking the vice president if he will 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, whose wife Usha Vance is the first Indian American to serve as second lady, responded “For the sake of both of our kids? 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,” Vance wrote. “A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children.”
The vice president, who has three young children, said he loathed Khanna’s post, which he called “emotional blackmail.”
“I don’t worry about my kids making mistakes, or developing views they later regret. I don’t even worry that much about trolls on the internet. You know what I do worry about, Ro? That they’ll grow up to be a US Congressmen who engages in emotional blackmail over a kid’s social media posts,” Vance added in the reply. “You disgust me.”
Musk quickly agreed with Vance, as did President Trump. In fact Musk took it a bit further and argued that the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story on Elez should lose her job, in part because she once worked for USAID.
And if you’re wondering, as I have been, why Musk decided that USAID is a terrible organization that must be destroyed, NBC News reported on Friday that he was influenced by a man named Michael Benz who served in the first Trump administration at the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs. Benz has his own history as a pseudonymous racist social media troll. In October 2023, Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News reported that Benz had gone by the name Frame Game.
The pseudonym, Frame Game, posted videos and participated in podcasts and livestreams during the rise of the alt-right following Donald Trump’s [2016] election. Frame Game avoided showing his face in his videos or appearances, during which he pushed a variety of far-right narratives including the “Great Replacement Theory” that posits the white race is being eradicated in America for politics and profits. In others, Frame Game said he was a white identitarian, railed against the idea of diversity and made montages urging white viewers to unite under the banner of race.
In interviews with white nationalists, Frame Game blamed Jews for “controlling the media” and for the decline of the white race. “If you were to remove the Jewish influence on the West,” he said in one video, “white people would not face the threat of white genocide that they currently do.”
One of the oddities of Benz espousing these anti-Semitic views is that he’s Jewish. But I guess it’s not that much stranger than J.D. Vance supporting an employee who thinks we should all hate his wife and kids. And I suppose it’s likewise unremarkable that “Frame Game,” the Great Replacement Theory proponent, was first hired into government by Ben Carson, the only black member of the first Trump administration.
In any case, Benz has become an influential conservative crusader against the Deep State, social media moderation, and, of course USAID. He’s even testified before the Republican-led House Subcommittee on the Weaponization and the House Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs.
These things will continue until the fascist regime is defeated.
