Donald Trump’s top counterterrorism adviser, Sebastian Gorka, is one of the most loathsome characters in a White House that has no shortage of them. This is a man who has documented ties to far-right groups in his native Hungary, and called a private citizen to berate him late at night. In other words–he has been the textbook example of how low Trump’s standards are for acceptable behavior in his administration.
Well, Gorka is about to leave the White House–but unfortunately, there’s a possibility that he may still be on the public payroll. CNN and the Washington Examiner both report that Gorka is about to leave his current post. While the Examiner suggested that Gorka is about to take a post at another federal agency, CNN suggested that he may be about to leave the government altogether.
The Examiner revealed late Sunday afternoon that Gorka is about to transition into a position dealing with the “war of ideas” in the fight against Islamist terror–one that will entail an appointment to a federal agency. He had served as an assistant to Trump, and had also worked on the National Security Council and the White House’s Strategic Initiatives Group. However, he didn’t have the necessary security clearance to truly do his job. According to one source in the administration, Gorka’s SIG post had been merely a temporary appointment while the White House created a counterterrorism position for him.
In the last three months, though, there have been a lot of questions about what Gorka actually does. According to one White House source, Gorka’s supposed duties included going on television to speak about terrorism, “giving White House tours and peeling out in his Mustang,” and not much else.
It’s easy to see why there were questions about what Gorka actually did in the White House. By most accounts, Gorka doesn’t have the credentials to serve at such a high level. Unlike most people who hold themselves out as experts in Islamist terrorism, he does not speak Arabic, and has never lived in a Muslim-majority country. He has only read the Qu’ran in English translation. He does have some counterterrorism experience in the British Army–but he focused on The Troubles in Northern Ireland, not Islam.
He never submitted articles for review in scholarly journals, even though he served on the faculty of the College of International Security Affairs. Additionally, Gorka was horribly unprepared for at least one seminar, and spent most of the time hawking his books. Those thin credentials led Republican national security expert Michael Smith II–the object of Gorka’s late-night call–to troll him with the hashtag “#FakeTerrorismExpert.”
And yet, Trump seems to have seen something in his writings at Breitbart, where he was national security editor. His claims that Islam is inherently violent seem to dovetail perfectly with Trump’s heavy-handed approach to Islam–even though most actual terrorism experts on both sides of the aisle dismiss them as oversimplification.
However, according to CNN, there’s a possibility that Gorka may simply leave the administration and go back to the private sector. According to one White House official, while it is possible that Gorka will take that “war of ideas” job, it’s more likely he will leave government service altogether. That official also says that what is clear beyond all doubt is that Gorka generates far too much controversy. Knowing what we know about this administration, that takes some effort.
Gorka himself didn’t give any public signs that he’s on the way out. On Friday, he returned to his old employer to tout his boss’ progress in fighting terror. Listen here.
He also wrote a column on Fox News giving an inside perspective on Trump’s first 100 days, in which he warned that we should find out what Trump wants to do from Trump himself, and praised him as a man of his word. Apparently Gorka has been living in a different world than the rest of us.
Hopefully these will be the last times we hear from Gorka as a government employee. His apparent departure is long overdue.
(featured image courtesy 7th Army Training Command, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
