A key staff member of US President Donald Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, had resigned a day earlier after he was linked to racist social media posts.

Marko Elez, 25, resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal linked him to a deleted social media account on X. He had made posts like, “I was racist before it was cool” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity”.

In a post made in September, it said, “Normalize Indian hate”, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley. Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is the daughter of Indian immigrants.

In its report, The Wall Street Journal found a since-deleted account under the handle @nullllptr with a user described as an employee at SpaceX and Starlink, two of Musk’s companies. The account previously went by the username @marko_elez.

According to BBC, the vice president had said earlier, that the young employee should be given a second chance. In a post on X, Vance said Elez should be brought back and blamed “journalists who try to destroy people.”

“I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance said. “I’m with the vice president,” Trump told a news conference Friday.

However, a few hours later, Elon Musk said that he was bringing back Elez. Musk posted, “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine.”

Earlier in the day, the administration had confirmed Elez’s resignation. The vice president stated that Elez should be fired “if he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team.”

Elez was one of two DOGE employees at the centre of controversy this week after they accessed the US Treasury Department’s payment system, leading to a court challenge and a judge’s decision to restrict their access.

According to the Associated Press (AP) report, Elez, in archives of his personal website, said he worked for SpaceX and on its Starlink satellites, and at X.

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