Sebastian Gorka is a former adviser to President Donald Trump, a Fox News contributor, an alt-right spokesman, and a hawker of fish oil.
When you hear Gorka interviewed, you might think that someone so arrogant obviously would have skills to support that arrogance. This isn’t so – until arrogance itself becomes a skill. He uses his arrogance to hide the fact that his academic credentials are questionable and his only real skill is being a poseur.
The Trump White House was so desperate to find an intellectual to work for them; unfortunately, they couldn’t find an intellectual dumb enough to work for them.
So they latched onto Gorka, a pseudo intellectual with ties to far-right, anti-Semitic organizations in Hungary, who substitutes facts with bombastic, self-assured obnoxiousness in television interviews — and Trump loved him for it.
Wonder why?
Gorka described himself as a national security adviser to the president, the New York Times reported, but he didn’t work for the National Security Council and had no clear duties other than defending Trump and insulting Trump cabinet secretaries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/us/politics/sebastian-gorka-leaves-white-house.html
Trump hired retired Marine General John Kelly in late July 2017 to become his chief of staff. Kelly then began trying to organize the White House so it didn’t look so much like rabid dogs chasing rabid cats.
The White House fired Gorka – though Gorka insisted that he had resigned.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/us/politics/sebastian-gorka-leaves-white-house.html
Gorka left after the dismissal of his friend and Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who, CNN reported, “was considered to be the driving force behind Trump’s nationalist and hardline immigration stances.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/26/politics/sebastian-gorka-sirius-xm-interview/index.html
Gorka had worked as national security editor for Bannon at the alt-right Breitbart News where he wrote, among other things, anti-Islam stories that were loud in voice but absent on detail, such as one that screamed, “Muslim Brotherhood Overruns National Cathedral in D.C.”
There was no truth to this story.
Gorka then followed Bannon and their right-wing views to the Trump White House, where he became, as Rolling Stone magazine put it, the “West Wing’s Phony Foreign Policy Expert.”
Critics charged that Gorka lacked the credentials and temperament to be working in the White House. But if everyone working in the Trump White House were fired because they lacked the requisite credentials and temperament, all that would remain would be the rabid dogs and cats.
“It’s surreal and quite horrifying that someone who’s such an amateur has reached such heights,” says David Ucko, associate professor in the Department of War and Conflict Studies at National Defense University.
Michael S. Smith II, a terrorism analyst who’s had unpleasant encounters with Gorka, added: “This is not somebody who should be working anywhere near the White House.”
Cindy Storer, an ex-CIA terrorism analyst and colleague of Smith’s, said bluntly of Gorka, “He’s nuts.”
Foreign Policy magazine headlined a story about him, “Sebastian Gorka May Be a Far-Right Nativist But for Sure He’s a Terrible Scholar.”
The magazine, for instance, said that Gorka claimed to be an expert on the Middle East yet did not speak Arabic and had never been in the Middle East.
Politico noted that while Gorka criticized those with established credentials, his own credentials remained something of a mystery. Politico said that experts interviewed for a story on Gorba said they “puzzled over the gap between the numerous military academic credentials listed by Gorka — a political science Ph.D. who unfailingly uses the title ‘Dr.’ — and their unfamiliarity with his work and views.”
Pamela Engel, politics editor of Business Insider, wrote that Gorka was “widely disdained within his own field.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/sebastian-gorka-trump-bio-profile-2017-2
She did not mention Gorka’s field, but it is not one that you would tread without heavy boots.
Gorka was fired after he defended white supremacism after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA., where an Adolf Hitler admirer drove his car into counterprotestors, killing one person.
Fortunately, for people like Gorka, there are opportunities for someone who speaks loudly about things they know nothing about, primarily Fox News and talk radio.
Gorka appeared regularly on Fox News until he was reportedly banned from appearing on any of news programs because, according to The Daily Beast, there was a general impression within the news division that Gorka is a “clown” and not an “objective” commentator on national security issues.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-hard-news-shows-have-a-ban-on-sebastian-gorka
He was then banned from You Tube for violating the platform’s presidential election integrity policy by continuing to perpetuate unproven accusations about voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.
Gorka still appears on Fox News where he hawks snake oil – I mean fish oil supplements – in television commercials.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjwm4m/dr-seb-gorka-has-a-new-job-and-its-sad
Easy mistake.
Gorka has always been been a snake oil salesman.
