Since President Trump appointed Sebastian Gorka last month as a deputy assistant, Mr. Gorka has been an increasingly visible defender of the administration.
He has spoken out in favor of the targeted travel ban, which spurred mass protests and was then blocked by federal courts. He suggested in a recent interview with The Hill that the CNN anchor Jake Tapper was sexist for aggressively questioning the Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. He has also insisted that media reports of turmoil in the White House bear “almost no resemblance to reality.”
Mr. Gorka came out swinging again on Thursday, after Mr. Trump’s contentious news conference in which he excoriated the media. Asked by Evan Davis of the BBC to assess Mr. Trump’s appearance, Mr. Gorka repeatedly declared the president’s performance “fabulous.”
“It’s only weird to journalists like yourself, who are biased,” he said.
Who is he? Here’s what we know:
Naturalized American citizen
Mr. Gorka is an American citizen who was born in Britain to Hungarian parents. He earned a Ph.D. in political science from Corvinus University of Budapest and has made his living as a national security expert with a focus on Islamist extremism.
He wrote a best-selling book, published last year, called “Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.” In his Breitbart articles, he has criticized foreign policy under the Obama administration and trumpeted the threat of the Islamic State group.
Breitbart veteran and friend of Bannon
Mr. Gorka, 46, is a former editor for the far-right media outlet Breitbart News and a friend of Stephen Bannon, the former Breitbart chairman who is now a powerful assistant to Mr. Trump.
Until recently, Mr. Gorka was not well known to Washington policy makers. But his increasing visibility has brought headlines, some less welcome than others.
He has appeared in a number of television and radio interviews as a representative of the Trump administration and a member of a White House team called the Strategic Initiatives Group. The Daily Beast called it a think tank within the White House that was set up by Mr. Bannon and the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.
Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/us/politics/dr-sebastian-gorka.html
