A highly influential figure in Donald Trump’s upcoming administration has miraculously skirted public attention.
Sergio Gor, a former Fox News booker and onetime Matt Gaetz wedding officiant, will be the next director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, a position that will have him “find, vet, and hire” some 4,000 officials, according to The Washington Post.
Gor’s job will be to “diligently” comb through thousands of options, assessing their loyalty to Trump’s cause. Per Trump’s son Donald Jr., that means understanding their political positions dating back to 2015 and assessing their fealty to Trump in the wake of January 6, 2021.
“What were they doing and saying at that time?” Don Jr. told the Post.
But inside Trumpworld, Gor is his own kind of riot. The book publisher and conservative party DJ has been described by some of the people closest to the president-elect as a “fun presence,” overwhelmingly popular, and “ruthlessly efficient.”
“He gets along with everybody in Trump’s orbit,” Charlie Kirk told the Post. “Which is very unusual. Jared, Ivanka, Don, Eric, the president. He’s an incredibly agreeable figure in Trumpworld, which will make the personnel job a great fit.”
Kirk made note of Gor’s MAGA allegiance, commenting that Gor was one of the few individuals who stuck by Trump’s side during the former president’s “exile period after 2020.”
But it’s not all about affability for Gor, who has seemingly taken the meaning of social climbing to new heights. He visited Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, in prison. He performs Phantom of the Opera songs with the MAGA leader and has been dubbed the “Mayor of Mar-a-Lago” for his near-constant presence at Trump’s Florida estate.
“I imagine he’s had dinner more in the last year with my father than I have,” Don Jr. told the publication.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner described Gor as a “very easy personality” that people in their orbit trust.
But Gor has also cultivated a reputation for ruthlessness, cruelty, and extreme callousness. Former colleagues in Congress, where he worked as a spokesman for Senator Rand Paul, have painted the status seeker as a “sweet-talking backstabber, bent on accruing power,” who, at one point, tormented a former Paul staffer about her deceased husband, the acclaimed journalist Michael Hastings, after he discovered she had a higher salary than him, reported the Post.
It’s through this patchwork of skills, both opportunistic and cruel, that Gor has made himself an invaluable asset to Trump’s MAGA empire. His well-rounded Rolodex has ushered in a new age for the administration, which Kushner noted to the Post could “barely give away ambassadorships” in 2016, but which now has “basically 20 people competing for every job.”
“The benefit of him having a strong relationship with Donald Trump,” Kushner told the Post, “is that he knows him well enough to know what he’ll care about and what he won’t care about, so he doesn’t have to go to him with every little decision.”