Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Donald J. Trump, has taken the next major step in the war against the legacy, establishment media: He has now defined the enemy.
President Trump and White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon—who along with Gorka is a former Breitbart News official—earlier this year identified the media class as the “opposition party.”
That happened in late January, just after the inauguration. Bannon infamously teased the media alongside White House chief of staff Reince Priebus as reporters lined an area of the White House at one point, saying there’s “the opposition party, all lined up.”
Trump then, in mid-February, further drew a line in the sand against the media, noting that their continued publication of fake news makes them an “enemy of the American people.”
CNN and others like the New York Times and MSNBC and so many more continue to publish demonstrably fake news without correction, apology, or consequences—unless they come under serious pressure as CNN was forced to have three of its editorial staff resign over the very fake news scandal engulfing the network. But since the media continues to refuse to act appropriately, now President Trump’s and the American people’s battle against fake news is hitting a new level.
Gorka, in a series of television appearances this weekend, has come forward with a terminology to define the enemy in this war: The “Fake News Industrial Complex.” Defining the enemy—knowing the enemy—is critical to winning in war.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle,” Sun Tzu wrote in the Art of War, per a translation Lionel Giles published by MIT.
Having a clear definition of the terminology and structure of the fake news world—the “Fake News Industrial Complex” does that—makes it easier for Trump to win the ever-looming war with the media. Sources close to the president tell Breitbart News that a “filthy, bloody war looms” with the fake news media—something the media will lose when confronted directly, head-on, for the first time it has ever been challenged.
Supporters of the president have also doubled down after CNN threatened to dox an anonymous Reddit user for supposedly making a popular WWE meme of the president body-slamming the logo of the anti-Trump network. In a satirical but highly violent viral video, Trump, superimposed on Braveheart’s William Wallace, literally does battle with establishment media:
Now, Gorka is leading the charge in setting the battle lines. He appeared on both Sean Hannity’s and Judge Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News programs.
Watch Gorka on Pirro’s program:
And on Hannity’s:
In the Hannity video, Gorka explained how the most in the media—those who are part of the “Fake News Industrial Complex,” as he put it crediting his White House colleague Andy Surabian for coining the term—has all but abandoned journalistic ethics.
“There are two ways to make it in your business, Sean,” Gorka explained. “One way is to go after the ratings with sensationalism, with lies—lies about Anthony Scaramucci, lies about what [Comey] is going to testify.”
The other way, of course, is to accurately report the news fairly and truthfully, something CNN and many others have abandoned.
Gorka noted that the media has a “psychological issue.”
“They cannot believe that the American people chose Donald J. Trump to be president,” Gorka said. “As a result, they’re in this bubble. They’re in this psychological crisis. They’re tanking, so they spin, they spin. They want to make more money on ratings, so their corporate owners are happy. The only way to be successful in the short term and the long term is to do what you do Sean: It’s about truth. You say that you’re a conservative, but you’re interested in the truth whether it’s about Benghazi, the IRS scandal, Fast and Furious. They don’t care about the truth. Think about their professionalism or their lack of it. Could you imagine a Walter Cronkite or an Edward R. Murrow having a guest on their show and then after the interview ends in the next panel they insult the guest when he can’t defend himself? That’s what Anderson Cooper did this week. That’s just unprofessional.”
Ironically, Gorka himself has been–as Hannity noted–the target of blatantly inaccurate fake news. Many in the media demonstrably inaccurately reported previously that Gorka was in trouble in the White House and potentially going to lose his position. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Breitbart News has reported.
And as Axios’ Jonathan Swan has noted, Gorka’s war with the media has won the admiration of the man himself, President Donald J. Trump.