Some of Donald Trump's appointees have reported violent threats since the president-elect nominated them to high-level government positions, but an analyst said one of his unelected advisers was putting lower-level officials and employees at risk.
The former president has tapped foreign-born tech mogul Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head the newly created quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency to drastically cut federal spending, and the X owner has revealed the names and titles of four relatively obscure government workers in a post revealed tens of millions of times and resulted in waves of harassment.
"He's essentially sort of a vice presidential sort of foil," said CNN's Juliette Kayyem. "We don't even see [vice president-elect J.D.] Vance much anymore. We see Elon Musk a lot more. He's very close with the president."
Musk singled out retired Army Lt. Col Alexander Vindman in an X post Wednesday accusing the former Trump impeachment witness of "treason" and warned he "will pay," and Kayyem said the tech CEO was needlessly putting individuals at risk for violence.
"People are nervous to take take this on, but it really does have to be taken on, so, I mean, Elon Musk just needs to honestly grow up – just grow up," Kayyem said. "I mean, this is silly behavior, and he may view it as funny. I mean, he sort of has an odd sense of humor, you know, there's you know, he's, you know, he's just very excitable."
"But what happens is people see that and they take it as a license to do something very unfunny," Kayyem added, "and so anyone who's an expert in these fields on whether online or or incitement or have has seen the wave of incitement to violence over the last four, eight, 12 years, really understands that that kind of language, whether a joke, whether he just thinks he's powerful, that punching down that he does is not only scary for the recipient of it, the the the unnamed person, right, but is also just, it's so easy to punch down, right, and I think we have to just grow up at this stage."
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