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WASHINGTON — A top White House aide is taking the blame for helping trigger President Trump’s fiery clash with Elon Musk — after speaking for months about giving the billionaire “payback” and even gloating to colleagues when Tesla’s stock price dropped, The Post has learned.
Sergio Gor, Trump’s director of presidential personnel, was instrumental in the president’s decision late Saturday to yank the nomination of Musk’s personal friend Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator, turning a contained disagreement on legislation into a firestorm of insults, four sources inside or close to the White House tell The Post.
Isaacman’s donations to Democrats — including $100,000 in 2021 to a PAC linked to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — would disqualify most nominees under Gor’s standard vetting process. But Isaacman wasn’t pulled by Trump until hours after Musk left his unpaid White House role, at Gor’s urging.
Musk was Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 election and this week’s clash has put the president’s legislative agenda at risk — and even threatens long-term political damage after Musk endorsed Trump’s potential impeachment.
Musk and Gor disliked each other since before Trump reclaimed power on Jan. 20 — with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO describing Gor as “sleazy” during the transition and questioning his staffing picks. But the world’s richest man had the president’s ear and friendship through last week.
Simmering behind the scenes was a grudge nursed by Gor over a March 6 cabinet meeting, during which Musk “humiliated” him by slamming the pace of staffing the administration, said the four sources, each of whom have interacted closely with Gor.
“He was bragging to other people that he was going to get one last shot at Elon out the door. He was going to get Elon back for making him look bad,” said one source.
“Elon was always telling the president ‘Sergio’s not moving fast enough to hire people. He’s not the right guy for the job.’ 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?’”
Another said: “Sergio was upset about Elon dressing him down at the meeting and said he was going to ‘get him’. [Isaacman’s nomination being pulled] was the modern-day equivalent of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Sure, Sergio got a scalp, but what did POTUS get?”
Three sources say Gor’s intensely personal dislike of Musk was illustrated by his periodic celebrations when Tesla’s stock cratered.
One source said that they were present when Gor laughed with satisfaction while showing off the dips in Musk’s wealth.
“He’d go around showing Tesla stock prices going down and laugh about it, like he was responsible for taking the Tesla stock down,” one White House source revealed.
The other said they heard from Gor repeatedly when Tesla stock tumbled.
Gor denied to The Post that he ever sought revenge against Musk and insisted that claims he openly rejoiced at Tesla stock falling were false.
Steve Bannon, a Gor supporter, told The Post that he believes that the breakdown had nothing to do with the relatively obscure White House aide — citing months of disagreements, including Musk’s dislike of Trump’s tariffs, Trump’s cancelation of a planned Pentagon briefing for Musk about China and the president not acting to extend Musk’s 130-day tenure as a special government employee.
“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 argued.
“Did Elon have a problem with Sergio? Yes, the fact that we are not hiring enough — guess what? — liberal f–king progressive Democrats.”
Bannon, who has pushing for Musk to be deported despite him being a naturalized American citizen since 2002, added claims that Gor was at the root of the clash were “absolutely ludicrous”
“This is all about the behavior … the incompetence, the lack of performance, the drugs which President Trump is very upset about, all of it, of Elon Musk,” Bannon said.
Although the White House was rife with tension for months with Musk and Gor “hating each other,” the bad feeling never spiraled out of hand until Thursday, when Trump and Musk went at each other with personal attacks.
Although Musk’s criticisms of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” gained significant attention, the president was chummy with the tech mogul on his last day in government May 30 — despite clips circulating for three days of the billionaire telling “CBS Sunday Morning” that “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful but I don’t know if it can be both.”
As part of the send-off, Trump and Musk praised each other in the Oval Office, with the latter receiving an ornate key to the White House.
Only after Isaacman’s nomination was pulled Saturday night did the tit-for-tat build, with Musk calling the bill a “disgusting abomination” Tuesday. The fight erupted further Thursday as Trump contended he would have won the election even without Musk’s help and the businessman firing back that the Jeffrey Epstein files contain information on the president.
“The NASA guy was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” one White House source said, arguing that Gor wanted “to bury the knife in [Musk’s] back.”
Musk is not the only White House figure to cross Gor, according to this source, who added that the personnel boss helped far-right activist Laura Loomer gain a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, after which six National Security Council officials were fired — while national security adviser Mike Waltz was moved out to become ambassador to the United Nations.
“There’s just one staffer that’s in the middle of every drama, leak and chaos that exists. It’s been a detriment to the president and the organization,” they said.
“We’ve bounced basically two billionaires from the party and from the movement, because Sergio doesn’t like them. And what does that do for anyone, or the cause?”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung called Gor “a vital member of the team and he has helped President Trump put together an administration that is second to none.”
But one source close to the White House said that illumination of the roots of the Trump-Musk feud could help prevent potentially devastating political consequences for Republicans.
“I think it will help,” the insider said. “If Elon understands that this was not the president that was going after him and that the president was played by Sergio, I think Elon might look at it as an opportunity to say, ‘Ok, let’s put this s— to bed. And this guy thinks he’s going to get me? I’m going to get him.’”
English (US)