WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday tapped close political aide Sergio Gor as US ambassador to India, sending one of his feared enforcers at a delicate time in ties with New Delhi.
The 38-year-old Gor rose quickly in conservative politics to become one of the most powerful, if low-profile, aides in the White House with a task of vetting some 4,000 appointees to ensure utmost loyalty to Trump.
Gor’s enemies include Elon Musk, who following his spectacular falling-out with Trump branded Gor a “snake” after he scuttled the tech and aerospace billionaire’s choice to lead NASA.
Gor’s influence does not include extensive experience in foreign policy, beyond joining travel overseas and leading a purge of National Security Council staffers whose views were called into suspicion.
“For the most populous Region in the World, it is important that I have someone I can fully trust to deliver on my Agenda and help us, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“Sergio will make an incredible Ambassador,” he wrote.
Trump wrote that Gor would also hold a role of special envoy for South and Central Asia. Trump has largely sidelined traditional diplomats and relied for diplomacy on personal friends, with the State Department’s top position for South Asia still vacant.
The nomination comes after a spike in tensions with India, which the United States has prioritized as an emerging partner since the 1990s.
Trump has moved to ramp up tariffs on India to pressure it over its purchases of energy from Russia, despite Trump’s own diplomacy with counterpart Vladimir Putin.
India in recent days has held top-level meetings with both Russia and China. Successive US administrations have viewed India as a balance against China, seen as the top US global rival.
Trump has spoken of brokering between India and Pakistan after they reached a ceasefire in a brief conflict in May, although India has been hesitant on any direct US role.
Gor was born in Uzbekistan when it was still in the Soviet Union — a background on which he has been discreet — before moving as a child to Malta.
After attending university in the United States, he became active in Republican Party politics, eventually taking top positions with Senator Rand Paul, a leading Republican critic of foreign interventionism, then working as a fund-raiser and book publisher for Trump — and as an amateur wedding DJ.
In his post, Trump hailed Gor’s work as director of presidential personnel, saying that 95 percent of positions have been filled and that he will stay on until the Republican-led Senate confirms him as ambassador.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio quickly endorsed Gor on X, saying he would be an “excellent representative of America in one of the most important relationships our nation has in the world.”
Trump named an ambassador to India later than for many other major countries. While presidents have often tapped political aides as ambassador — former president Joe Biden sent former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to Tokyo — India has an illustrious history of seeing public intellectuals as ambassador. US ambassadors to India have included prominent economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the social scientist and future senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Biden’s ambassador to India was Eric Garcetti, a former mayor of Los Angeles known for his interest in Indian philosophy and who had studied Hindi and Urdu as a young man.
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