‘We shouldn’t reward journalists who attempt to destroy people’: JD Vance goes after the free press following DOGE controversy

On Friday, February 6, 2025, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), announced that he would be rehiring the DOGE staffer who resigned from a sensitive Treasury Department post when it was revealed that he had tweeted in support of racist ideologies. Musk’s posts that he was hiring the staffer back came after United States Vice President JD Vance called for the reinstatement of the DOGE staffer, a sentiment that President Donald Trump endorsed.

Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE staffer who occupied a sensitive Treasury Department post with access to the Social Security and Medicare payment system, resigned on Thursday, February 6, after The Wall Street Journal inquired about his connection to a now-deactivated X account that made a series of racist posts in September 2024. The posts included statements like, “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” and “Normalize Indian hate.”

Via a public poll, Musk asked on his social media platform X if he should rehire Elez. As a response to Musk’s poll, Vance posted that while he “obviously” disagreed with “some” of Elez’s posts, he doesn’t believe that “foolish social media behavior should ruin a kid’s life.”

Vance continued, “We shouldn’t reward journalists who attempt to destroy people. Ever. So, I say bring him back. If he’s a bad person or a terrible team member, fire him for that.”

Elez didn’t merely act foolishly, though, like wearing a clown costume to work; he acted hatefully and did it in a semi-public forum. Although, according to a Bark article, hate speech indeed thrives on social media by allowing people to post their thoughts immediately without filtering them, that doesn’t mean his racist comments were merely the “foolish” ramblings of a cis man whose brain still isn’t fully formed (the brains of people assigned male at birth don’t finish developing until 30, or later, if a person is neurodivergent).

A 2021 study on racism, hate speech, and social media found that platforms like X, through their algorithm designs and content moderation policies that enable anonymity to harassers, often allow—even encourage—racially motivated comments and jokes because they promote engagement with the website. The promotion of profit over people continues despite the profound impact that such hate speech has on minorities. For example, in an article published in the Journal of the European Economic Association, researchers found a correlation between “short-run bursts in anti-refugee sentiment on social media” and “real-life hate crimes” by “enabling coordination online, both through group actions and local spillovers.” 

Furthermore, according to the Social Media Victims Law Center, racism on social media has a “profound effect” on children’s health, as “emotions such as anger, fear, and shame can be particularly devastating for the young.”

In response to Vance’s recommendation, Musk announced on his social media platform X that he would be rehiring the staffer. “He will be brought back,” Musk wrote. “To err is human, to forgive divine.”

Not only is Vance’s comment upsetting because it could lead to the rehiring of Elez, but his anti-journalist sentiment is the latest example of the Trump administration’s attack on America’s free press.

Heidi Kitrosser, a constitutional law professor focusing on freedom of speech issues at Northwestern University, told Al Jazeera:

“We are seeing a multipronged attack on free speech, but not just any free speech. I think, in particular, we’re seeing a multipronged attack on the ability of journalists as well as individuals to call into question anything that Donald Trump or that the Trump administration does. We’re seeing an effort to cow journalists into submission, not only to avoid criticism of Donald Trump and the people who work under him, but to avoid reporting the news in any way that he dislikes.”

Vance’s statement that “journalists who attempt to destroy people” shouldn’t be rewarded “ever” is just the latest example of the administration’s attempt to “cow journalists into submission.”