When Sebastian Gorka turned up on TV the other day, announcing that the Secretary of State has no bidness commenting on military matters, and that the President's tweets will bring North Korea to its knees, my first thought was, "Is he still there?"
Gorka, 47, is a British born Hungarian naturalized American who holds the singular honor of having been denied security clearance by two different nations, and still rising to become an assistant to the President of the United States.
He was supported to get fired in May.
Vanity Fair reported,
multiple sources told The Daily Beast that the White House was “actively exploring options” to part ways with the self-described alpha male, whose usefulness as a surrogate has of late been tarnished by a series of investigative reports uncovering his longstanding ties to two far-right, anti-Semitic, Hungarian nationalist groups. He was also, it seems, pretty useless as an actual White House adviser: BuzzFeed reported that the national security expert never received an actual national security clearance, meaning that he had no real input in any policy decisions, nor could he attend any high-level meetings. “I am told he basically sits in the White House canteen drinking coffee between Fox News live hits,” said a former Obama administration official. Another source told the Washington Examiner that it was never clear what Gorka did besides going on TV and “giving White House tours and peeling out in his Mustang.”Gorka, as would be said in therapeutic circles, has unresolved personal issues:
The prevailing narrative is that the White House is frustrated with the controversies dogging Gorka, many related to his time in Hungarian politics. Over the past few months, the JForward published several articles alleging that Gorka was a sworn member of the Vitézi Rend, a group founded by an anti-Semitic Hungarian politician who allied the group with the Nazis during World War II. (Though Gorka vehemently denied that he was involved with the order, explaining that he only wore Vitéz medals in honor of his father, the group said that Gorka swore a lifelong oath of loyalty.) Gorka’s problems only worsened when it was reported that during his time in Hungarian politics, he had also backed a paramilitary group called the Hungarian Guard, which had its own anti-Semitic history. Last week, after the Forward reported that he had used an honorific reserved for Vitézi Rend members in his letters and columns, he rage-quit a Georgetown panel on cybersecurity when students began asking questions about his background and credentials. (As he stormed off, he addressed the students as “victims of fake news.”)Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, has stated his reservations about Gorka influencing policy in the White House, saying; "Gorka does not have much of a reputation in serious academic or policymaking circles. He has never published any scholarship of significance and his views on Islam and US national security are extreme even by Washington standards. His only real 'qualification' was his prior association with Breitbart News, which would be a demerit in any other administration."
For a decade Gorka has drifted about the edges of DC, patching together gigs as an adjunct professor here and a commentator there. He came to The White House after two years as a national security editor for Breitbart News.
Breitbart to this day always refers to him as "Doctor Sebastian Gorka" because if you repeat a thing enough times, that makes it true.
Gorka's mother has worked closely as a translator with David Irving, the loathsome UK historian who has spent thirty years denying the Holocaust.
By such men's labors is America made great again.
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