Summary
Elon Musk called for the firing of Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long after she exposed racist tweets from Marko Elez, a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee who later resigned.
Long’s report revealed Elez had posted remarks promoting racism and eugenics.
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” Elez posted in July, according to the Journal’s review of archived posts.
Musk, who claims to support free speech, labeled Long “disgusting and cruel” and demanded that she should be fired.
Critics noted the hypocrisy of Musk advocating for a journalist’s removal over accurate reporting on a public official’s misconduct.
Reminder: Usha Vance clerked for Kavanaugh and Roberts. While she doesn’t deserve to be the target of racial abuse, she does not likely take issue with such language being used more broadly.
On the other hand, she didn’t vote Republican until doing so for her husband in the 2022 primary in Ohio, so she is a land of contrasts, likely being on whatever side gives her power or access to it. She is, at best, undergoing some cognitive dissonance (though we haven’t seen any such evidence thus far), but she is no victim.