NYT:

President Trump has made clear his animus toward mainstream media organizations. Now he’s getting more personal.

Mr. Trump and his key lieutenant, Elon Musk, who has been empowered to run what they call the Department of Government Efficiency as a “special government employee,” have attacked journalists by name in recent days on the social media platforms they own: Truth Social and X….

Mr. Musk took aim at a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, Katherine Long. Ms. Long was the first to reveal, in a report in The Journal on Thursday, that Marko Elez, one of Mr. Musk’s lieutenants in the Department of Government Efficiency, was linked to a since-deleted racist social media account that had posted statements like, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”

Mr. Elez resigned after The Journal approached the White House for comment, according to the article. It was Ms. Long’s first article in her new job at The Journal.

Mr. Musk said in separate replies on X on Friday that Ms. Long was “a disgusting and cruel person” and should be “fired immediately.”…

Vice President JD Vance also weighed in on X on Friday, saying that he disagreed with some of Mr. Elez’s posts but that they shouldn’t “ruin a kid’s life.” (Mr. Elez is 25 years old.)

“We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever,” Mr. Vance wrote.

The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Journalists have a job to do and should never be attacked by high-ranking government officials for doing it,” Timothy Richardson, the journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, a free-expression nonprofit, said in a statement.

He added, “Musk’s call for this journalist’s firing contradicts his self-proclaimed free speech advocacy and reveals his hypocrisy.”…