Axios reports:

Shortly after President Trump unexpectedly withdrew Elon Musk’s pick to lead NASA last weekend, one name quickly surfaced as a major force behind the surprise decision: top White House aide Sergio Gor.

Why it matters: Trump acknowledged Thursday that canceling Jared Isaacman‘s NASA nomination had “upset” Musk, who’s close to Isaacman. It was a factor, among many, that led to Thursday’s shocking falling out between the president and his one-time “First Buddy,” the world’s richest person.

Musk spent the afternoon flaming Trump on X. It left presidential advisers stunned — and some of them angry at Gor, whose tense relationship with Musk was a backdrop to the controversy.

• Senate Republicans also blamed Gor for helping undermine the NASA nomination to settle a score with Musk, who had been critical of Gor’s management of the White House personnel office.
• Gor declined to comment. But one senior White House official called Axios on Gor’s behalf to praise his “brilliance, hard work and dedication.”

Zoom in: Gor is one of the most influential Trump advisers in the White House, and co-founded Winning Team Publishing with Donald Trump Jr. The imprint publishes books by Trump and his allies, and put much-needed cash in Trump’s pocket during his isolation after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

• Gor, a frequent presence at Mar-a-Lago, has a close relationship with former Marvel executive Ike Perlmutter, one of Trump’s closest friends and a major donor.

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The Tablet reports:

A large part of the responsibility to staff the Trump administration with people who believe in the president’s policies falls on the director of the PPO, Sergio Gor. Now responsible for filling more than 4,000 Executive Branch jobs, the 38-year-old Gor grew up on the island of Malta and speaks fluent Maltese. He entered Trump World through his business ties with the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. In 2021, the two founded Winning Team Publishing, which has published several books attributed to the president—including Our Journey Together, Save America, and Letters to Trump, which has earned more than $6 million in sales. The firm has also published books by others in the Trump circle, including Navarro and Charlie Kirk.

Kirk told the press that Gor “gets along with everyone in Trump’s orbit.” Nicknamed the “mayor of Mar-a-Lago,” the president’s private club and personal residence, Gor has deejayed MAGA theme parties there. During the campaign, he was a frequent fixture on the club’s porch, where he solicited campaign donations from the club’s members.

“Gor is [just] in over his head,” one tech executive close to MAGA and the administration told Tablet. “I don’t think he’s trying to place the wrong people in the administration out of malevolence. It’s that the administration is a $7 trillion institution, and he has no experience staffing any institution.”

Gor’s biography shows similar signs of having been thrown together in a hurry. While he advertises himself as a devout Maltese Catholic, some of his acquaintances reportedly have claimed that he was born in the Soviet Union—not exactly a native hotbed of Roman Catholicism—before emigrating to Malta as a boy. The family then moved in 1999 to Los Angeles, where Gor attended high school. He reportedly shortened his name to Gor from Gorokhovsky, which he went by while he was enrolled at George Washington University. In 2008, he reportedly was an activist in “Catholics for McCain,” which marked his first foray into Republican Party politics.

Gor then worked for the Republican National Committee and fringe GOP lawmakers Randy Forbes, Michele Bachmann, and Steve King. After a stint at Fox News, Gor got a job as communications director with Sen. Rand Paul and eventually found his way into Trump’s orbit.

Whether or not Gor’s experience on Capitol Hill and on the Mar-a-Lago back porch qualifies him to staff the White House is certainly debatable. What is clear is that Gor is loyal to Trump, as suggested by his role at Winning Team Publishing and the fact that he did not abandon the president during his post-Jan. 6 exile. More significant than Gor’s loyalty to Trump may be his partnership and close personal relationship with Donald Trump Jr., who applauded his father’s decision to hire Gor on social media last November. [Continue reading…]