Americans looking for the cause of Thursday’s explosion between President Donald Trump and billionaire businessman Elon Musk got at least one answer from a news report published Friday.
In a lengthy piece, the New York Post took readers behind the scenes at the White House to identify a top Trump staffer who’d been “fanning flames” of conflict between the two.
And Musk and the staffer had been at loggerheads for months, the Post reported.
Citing interviews with five unidentified sources, described as “inside or close to the White House,” the Post reported that Sergio Gor, the director of presidential personnel, was known to have been involved in an ongoing feud with Musk dating back to even before Trump’s inauguration in January.
During the presidential transition period, Musk had described Gor as “sleazy,” according to the Post, and “questioning his staffing picks.”
At a March 6 cabinet meeting, the paper reported, Musk attacked Gor in front of the president.
“Elon was always telling the president ‘Sergio’s not moving fast enough to hire people. He’s not the right guy for the job,’” one source told the Post. “In front of the entire cabinet, he said that. It’s not just humiliating, but the president starts looking at him like, ‘Why aren’t you doing your f***ing job?’”
For his part, Gor made a habit of mocking Musk, according to the Post, especially when stock dropped in Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company. He would also “plant” negative stories about Musk, one source told the Post.
“Elon was, like, his obsession, and he would plant a story on Elon and he would send me the link and then send me a screenshot of Tesla’s stock price with a laughing face,” the source said, according to the Post. “I own Tesla stock, so this is not a good thing for me!
“It showed how intense that fight had become, and how committed and obsessed with it Sergio was, and that’s what I don’t think anybody has really captured.”
Gor was also bent on revenge, one source told the Post.
“He was bragging to other people that he was going to get one last shot at Elon out the door,” the source said, according to the newspaper. “He was going to get Elon back for making him look bad.”
Musk officially left White House service on Friday, and all appeared amicable between him and Trump, despite Musk’s public criticisms of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that has become Trump’s most important political priority.
The tipping point of the feud, however, came on Saturday when Trump announced he was pulling the nomination of Jared Isaacman, a space entrepreneur personal friend of Musk, to be the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Isaacman’s nomination had already been approved by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which oversees NASA, and, according to Axios, his eventual confirmation by the full Senate was all but assured.
Gor was “instrumental” in getting Trump to pull the nomination, according to the Post.
And that Trump decision, as the Post put it, turned “a contained disagreement on legislation into a firestorm of insults.”
Gor’s reasoning for opposing Isaacman was his past support of Democrats, according to the Post. In 2021, for instance, he gave $100,000 to a PAC supporting then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
In a statement to the Post, Gor denied he ever sought revenge against Musk or celebrated Tesla stock dropping, the newspaper reported.
As to the Isaacman nomination, he had no apologies.
“I fully support President Donald Trump’s decision to remove this nominee,” he said in the statement, according to the Post.
“Those who actively supported Democrats in the last cycle have no place in this administration. This was never about Elon, it’s about someone who doesn’t agree with America First Principles.”
Steve Bannon, the conservative commentator who served as a strategist in the first Trump White House is a Gor supporter who downplayed the whole premise of the report, according to the Post.
And he made it clear where he stood in the whole controversy.
“It’s the president and Elon. This has nothing to do with Sergio Gor. Sergio Gor is a staffer that the president has to do things,” Bannon said, according to the Post.
“Did Elon have a problem with Sergio? Yes, the fact that we are not hiring enough — guess what? — liberal f***king progressive Democrats.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
