Bulwark Takes - JD Vance Wants To BRING BACK Elon’s Super Racist DOGE Employee

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Sarah Longwell and Sam Stein go off on JD Vance and Elon Musk after they defend the racist DOGE employee who was removed.

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark. I'm here with our fearless publisher, Sarah Longwell. Sarah, how you doing? I'm great, man. Thanks for jumping on. I've got, I would like to talk about this weird racist kid that J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States, is out here, you know, swinging for. We're talking about Marco Alez. Now, Marco, people might not know him, 25-year-old. He was part of Elon Musk's lieutenants at Doge. He was specifically tasked with scrutinizing federal spending and being placed at the Treasury to help, I guess, oversee their payment system. That's like $5 to $6 trillion in payments, 25-year-old. Long story short, Wall Street Journal comes out with a story yesterday about an anonymous Twitter handle that he was operating that was violently racist.

In fact, openly racist. One of the things Marco says, quote, just for the record, I was racist before it was cool. Apparently it's cool now. It's just like the admission there is like it is now cool to be racist. I didn't realize it was cool to be racist. Well, I'm old, so maybe I missed it. He also said, quote, you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity. Normalize Indian hate, he wrote.

What's his name? Marco Alez. I don't know what his ethnicity is. What do you think? I mean, yeah, what is his ethnicity? It's clearly not Indian. Unless he's self-hating. I clearly not Indian. Oh, yeah. Unless he's self-hating. I don't know. But, yeah.

Well, did you read the next one? Because it did say normalize Indian hate. Wasn't that one of them? Normalize Indian hate, which is an interesting take for someone working in Silicon Valley. Yeah. So, anyways, on Friday morning – or, sorry, yesterday he was booted or resigned, I should say, from Doge. And then on Friday morning, Elon Musk's post a poll to X asking his followers if they should reinstate the guy. And it's like 80 to 85 percent. Yes. Bring him back. And then we get J.D. Vance. And this is where we want to jump off.

J.D. Vance comes on Twitter and he says, 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 try to destroy people ever, so I say bring him back. If he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that. I want to diagram this tweet. I want to go line by line. Fair enough. With its stupidity.

So, first of all, let's hit the first part, right? Which is, okay, he disagrees with some of Uleza's posts. Some. Just some. Now, I imagine he does, considering he has an Indian wife and biracial children. So, you could see how that might be. So let's not, it's magnanimous of J.D. Vance to say, oh, okay, you want to normalize hate against my wife and children, but we're cool, bro.

We're cool. You know why? Because he doesn't think stupid. At one point, one of the posts I saw from this guy is that both Israel and Palestine should be blown off the map, blown off the face of the earth. I believe this is what he said. Quote, I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the earth. OK, so we're just like casual genociding, casual genocide.

So that's the stupid media activity should ruin a kid's life. All right. So let's take the kid part. Because the kid thing is what kills me. Yeah. Because you are either a kid who is too young and stupid to be held accountable for your actions, or you're a grownup who's allowed to see all the sensitive information in the process of dismantling the federal government. You do not get to have it both ways. Sorry, JD. He doesn't get to be a stupid kid popping off while he is in charge of dismantling the federal government and seeing everybody's most sensitive financial information, things that are classified. I mean, this is an insane thing to hold in the same idea. Right. So I have, that was my main frustration when this is, it just doesn't make sense.

Like he can't be babied and coddled and then handed over the keys to our, you know, $6 trillion payment system. That's obviously. Two is the idea that J.D. Vance and Elon Musk are passive observers in this drama and they just want to bring this kid back. He left for a reason. Like he didn't resign because, you know, he was feeling like, oh, I've become too much of a distraction. They told him you got to go. Obviously, this is how it works. They said, hey, this is bad stuff. Like we need you to leave. And now they're going to play the

victim here to cancel culture. No one canceled this kid. No one said he had to go. They were the ones who pushed him out. Now they're going to turn and say, oh, the mainstream media is talking to this poor little child. We should take him back. Go ahead, take him back. Do whatever you have to do. You were the ones who pushed him out. If you want to be associated with this type of person, that's your call. You have the power. You cannot play victim anymore. You have the power. And then I guess, obviously, look, the last part is just ridiculous. If he's a bad dude. No, wait, wait, wait. We're diagramming the sentences.

We're still on the kid part. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I don't think we've gotten there yet. You keep going. You keep going. You keep going. No, no, no, no, no.

We haven't gotten to that. That's a whole separate discussion. I thought you were done. Okay, good. No, these lines contain multitudes of idiocy, and it needs to be broken down into its relative parts. You go. Wait, so hold on. But I want to hit something that you were just talking about.

What was the first point you made before you went to your second point? Well, I was talking about how he was a young kid who needed a job. Oh, no, no, no. You were talking about the fact that they pushed him out, that they did this. So, so, right. So this is important, uh, actually, because why would they, after seeing it and having their first reaction, much like let's say January 6th or some other thing that you're like, oh, this is bad actually on its face. This is bad. Any, any person looks at it, but then what do you think happened? Because Elon and JD Vance, maybe they were like, Oh wait, we've cultivated a massively racist audience. Our audience online, the people who love us the most are the people who are like,

yay, Elon for letting neo-Nazis back on the platform. Thank you. I'm so glad Nick Fuentes is here. It's the pep of the frog crowd. And so those people got mad that Elon, like they were, he was getting backlash for letting this guy go. That's my assumption, right? Because this is the, yeah, this is chronology, right? The journal uncovers these, this anonymous account. They go to the White House. This is how they say it in their piece. They go to the White House. They ask the White House about his connection to the account. And then they report he resigned after they to the White House. They ask the White House about his connection to the account. And then they report he resigned after they asked the White House about it. Now, I don't have a sense.

I don't get the sense that Marco Ales went to the White House and said, hey, look. And even if he did, they were like, OK, probably should. They didn't fight him on it. So they pursued this path. And then, of course, as you say, because the whole thing, the whole modus operandi here is like we have to shove it in the face of journalists. We have to shove it in the face of cancel culture. We have to shove it in the face of those who are woke. They probably got pushback for this kid going and then decided, oh, you know what? We need to create a predicate to bring him back.

No one made them do this. That's right. Their first instinct, right, was the correct one. Like the gut instinct was this is maybe and maybe it was the kid himself. Like, I guess we don't exactly know. But at the first blush, everybody, maybe the kid felt shame, shame at the fact that his, you know, burner account, his anonymous burner account, we were spouting off racist nonsense was now connected to him as a human. And he thought, boy, these are terrible things that I've said, and I feel shame about this.

And so I should go correct instinct or, and the people who were there also must also reflected back. Yes, it is not adults who run the government don't get to say this kind of racist stuff without accountability and so yes go and then somewhere in there right for reasons related to the fact that elon himself uh and much of the the audience that serves them is quite racist directly racist not hey anybody who thinks we ought to have borders, accusation. No. Like, real racists that permeate the X platform now. The 80% who voted to bring this kid back, this child who cannot be held accountable

for his actions, those people are real racists. And so just to be clear, that's now who's running things, who people are responsive to. Or, yeah, that's who they're responsive to. Yes, exactly. That's the thing. They are more responsive to and fearful of that crowd than anyone else. And so that's what drove this.

Okay, so then we can get to. This is a forensic unpacking of this tweet. I like it. Go ahead. Next line. We're going to diagram this whole this tweet. I like it. Go ahead. Next line. We're going to diagram this whole thing. We're doing it. We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people ever.

Okay. So let's see. What did the journalists do? They showed evidence of words the person said. Right. Is that them trying to destroy him or is the problem his words would in a socially functioning country, like in a civilized country, would say, that's beyond the pale. You don't get to be paid with my tax dollars. Did the Wall Street Journal ruin his life, as J.D. Vance says? Well, this is the thing. Yes. And this is the thing that

I guess is frustrating to me professionally, is that these people are being handed the keys to the kingdom. I mean, they're being told, you have all this power over every facet of our federal government. Go and make it efficient and slash programs and do all these reforms.

But if they get a modicum of scrutiny on who we actually are entrusting to do this, it's met with horrors from J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, and others. I mean, Elon Musk has on several occasions called the criminal to examine who these people are, ask questions about who is actually now running effectively our government. And if we can't ask basic questions about who these people are, what are we doing here? Are we not allowed to expose this stuff? I mean, the free speech

warriors that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and so on. There you go. The free speech warriors. That's right. They clearly obviously have limitations on what type of free speech they support. Which sort of goes to one of the bigger problems about what's happening right now, right, is which they believe they should be free of scrutiny. They believe that they should be like the whole point, really, of the government is because it is paid for by Americans tax dollars. There is a tremendous amount of accountability. And one of the reasons, actually, that the government can be slow and cumbersome and not as efficient as other places is because it operates in a world where like there's going to be a ton of accountability. The American people are

entitled to see what is happening with their tax dollars. Journalists are going to look at what is and communicate for the American people what is happening with their tax dollars. This is actually how American democracy works. This is how free speech works. And imagine, okay, like put aside racism, which is horrible and bad. I mean, the other person on this Doge committee overseeing the treasury, I want to get this guy's name right, because it's kind of interesting. His name is Tom Krause, and he runs this cloud software group. So he is actually along or prior to Marco being pushed out, he was overseeing the treasury stuff. And he runs this company and he's not actually removing himself from running the company while he does this treasury thing. There's a trade publication article in which he told the company, I'm staying on board at Cloud Software Group even as I do this.

We're digging into it right now. Cloud Software Group has government contracts. I mean, that is like an obvious conflict of interest. You are kidding. And under Elon's rules, we would never know this stuff. We would be, in fact, not entitled to dig into those conflicts. It would, in fact, be criminal, according to Elon, to dig into this stuff. And I find that to be ridiculous.

It's almost anti-American. The whole system of checks and balances does depend on having some scrutiny and insight and transparency into who is running our government. And so, yes, Marco is getting scrutinized because he had anonymous racist social media postings. But that's par for the course. That's what you sign up for. If you want the power, it comes with the scrutiny. That's just the way it works. Sorry, guys. Sorry. You want to be in charge of the government? Okay. Those are my tax dollars. I'm paying you right now, young man, you little kid who can't be held accountable. Okay okay let's go to the next line right because uh so he says so i say bring him back now i just like to pause here for one second that seems like a

trivial sentence maybe when we wouldn't need to spend a lot of time on except this is the vice president of the united states i thought about that too it's not this this passenger but muncher 24 online it's president of the United States saying rehire this guy. So like, and it's just him. Also, just to just to say, it's also him quote tweeting on the platform of the richest guy in the world who did a public poll of his racist followers because lots and lots of people have left the platform uh and saying i the vice president of the united states say bring him back okay well you're not just some random shit poster jd vance though that's really how you act most of the time you're the vice president united states so okay now the vice president has said bring this racist back okay good to know good to know that's what the vice president thinks. Now we can get to the last one because this is a whole universe in this last line. We're building up here, yeah. If he's a bad

dude, if he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that. Right. J.D. Vance, that's what just happened. He was fired for being a bad dude. Right. Exactly. For being a terrible member of the team because he is a racist man child who has called for genocide and hatred against an ethnic group. So he is, by definition,

a bad dude, unless you, J.D. Vance, are saying to me, overt racists are good dudes. Right. That's what stood out to me. If he's a bad dude, well, how do you judge someone? Right? How do you judge someone? Is it what they say? Is it what they post? Is it their racism? And if not, why does that not make him a bad dude and then i guess the other question is at what age do you think you should be held accountable for the things you say obviously 25 he doesn't believe is it 28 30 at what point will jd vance say you know what you are responsible for the racist posts that you make and i do think that's a line that was crossed obviously that's a rhetorical question because in jd vance's world it doesn't matter really if you post racist stuff you can always excuse it and say well it's private or he he just

doesn't know the world what matters is if you're on his side, on his team, and if you can shove it in the face of journalists or Democrats or Trump opponents. And it's all that binary. He looks at the world through those binary lenses and that's it. And so I'm sure J.D. Vance will find there will be a moment where some tweets from some 25 year old liberal on earth, and they look really stupid and shitty and are flagrantly woke. And J.D. Vance won't give that person any benefit ever because it's not about consistency. It's just about tribalism, and that's it. That's right.

And here's the thing. I'm an advocate, actually, for grace for young people online, and I want people to be able to change and not be judged by their worst tweet. I genuinely believe that. I think there's lots of people who, especially now that young people are on social media starting, you know, people say stupid shit, a 25 year old kid. Yeah. Your brain is probably not.

It's like only just starting to really gel for that guy. But that's but that's that's the thing he's not allowed then to be in charge of the dismantling of our government he's just not you cannot have that both ways uh and so you want us to show this guy grace you don't want his life to be ruined fine but he needs to go figure out he needs to not be on my dime he doesn't get to be on my dime. Yeah. Amen.

All right, Sarah, I got to run. Thank you for this. It felt fresh. It felt raw. I enjoyed it. Appreciate it.