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.
While USAID definitely funds/funded many ridiculous things (such as this) they also provide much-needed food and medicine to a lot of people - for cynical politically-motivated soft-power reasons, but still. It seems very likely that abruptly cutting off those programs will cause some people to die. I really hope someone (the PRC seems likely) will step in and replace some of those programs!