Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a former senior aide to former President Donald Trump, explained in a wide-ranging interview last week how he has faced cancel culture, how to fight back against it, and why the left and establishment practices it against Trump supporters.
Appearing on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel with editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, Gorka — who now hosts America First on Salem Radio Networks — laid out first the reasoning why the left and political establishment seeks to shut down voices like his.
“We could write a book about this. I don’t kiss and tell, but you’ve been on this issue from the get go. I’ve been very honest about it publicly,” Gorka told Marlow. “It’s the reason I left the White House and it was Breitbart that published my resignation letter. I told the president at the time, you literally have anti-MAGA forces in ascendance. At the time, it was H.R. McMaster and it was General Kelly who were pushing me out of the building. And I told the president, ‘There is no way I am going to pick up a $160,000 pay check from the taxpayer just to be boxed out of meetings by people who hate me and the president. I can better serve you on the outside.’ He agreed and now I have a national radio show, three million listeners, and we’re fighting the good fight. But at the end of the day, this isn’t really a function of any incompetence by the president, it’s a function of the swamp. What is the conclusion that has to be drawn from the experience of people who are pro-MAGA and work for the president? The left, the establishment, the mainstream media, the RINO class, want to make it impossible for good people to represent the forgotten men and women of America. They want to make your life impossible.”
Gorka said that he does not mind attacks against him personally, but when people attack his family, that crosses the line. He cited the example of Disney canceling Gina Carano, the star actress from The Mandalorian, over social media posts that she published commenting on the state of society and noted that similar tactics have been used against any talented people who may want to work for Trump or other effective Republicans.
“Look, I don’t mind being attacked, that’s fine, but when they come after your wife, when they attack my teenage son, it has one purpose: To make sure good people don’t get involved in representing this nation,” Gorka said. “So I’m not involved in choosing the president’s lawyers, but I’ll tell you one thing: How many law firms would actually risk representing Donald Trump? I talk national security, but I woke to this Gina Carano story. Seriously, a woman who speaks the truth — absolutely speaks the truth about the left’s attempts to dehumanize their fellow Americans — is canceled by Disney? It’s the same effect of a lawyer wanting to work for Donald Trump. It is an attempt to attack and create an environment where good people will simply keep their heads down.”
Gorka then recounted a story from his daughter’s time in college and her senior year when he worked for President Trump. “My children who are now grown will admit that the tribulations that we went through as a family during my time in the White House as a supporter of the president have truly made them stronger human beings,” Gorka said. “I am convinced as their father that their value system is all the more robust for what they witnessed happened to us and to them personally. Read the first chapter of my book The War for America’s Soul. What happened to my daughter in her last year in college was simply a function of her last name.”
What happened was leftists on campus made posters with his daughter’s face falsely claiming she was a white supremacist and then plastered them all around campus. When he showed up for her graduation that year, at least one leftist falsely accused Gorka of being a Nazi.
“So because she was a Gorka, because she volunteered to work with some of the professors who created something called the Churchill Institute to propagate the values of western civilization — that’s in their mandate — she had posters with her face put up across the campus and on social media saying this girl is the face of white supremacy,” Gorka said. “That was just weeks before her graduation. Then when I was there for the graduation, I had a girl come up after we had celebrated my daughter getting her diploma and, in front of witnesses, call me an ‘effing Nazi’ because I work for Trump.”
Gorka, who was born in London to parents who fled Hungary after the failed revolution in 1956 against Soviet control but then later served in Hungary as a Ministry of Defence adviser after the fall of communism, compared the bending of America’s will toward cancel culture to efforts of a Soviet dictator in Hungary to slowly break someone’s spine.
“This is the reality, but let me tell you a story which puts it into perspective,” Gorka said. “During the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact had various levels of persecution and sovietization. The harshest were of course the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Romania. Those were the really kind of absolute worst of the worst. Others, like Hungary, kind of dialed back a little on the Stalinist nature of the regime. By the 1970s, Hungary was called the ‘Goulash Communism.’ You weren’t allowed to go to Paris for the holidays, but you could go to Yugoslavia. You still had political prisoners, you still had a one-party state, but they just dialed it back a little bit. There’s a story that’s associated with then-dictator Janos Kadar, where somebody was lambasting him for not having a hard Stalinist line and he said — and who knows whether it happened or not — he said ‘my friend, it is far easier to bend the human spine slowly with time than to try to snap it with one move.’ That, that is what you are giving in to when you say, ‘I’m just going to get my head down, I’m just going to send checks to the local Republican candidate, but I’m not going to say anything and not going to do politics on social media.’ Guess what? You’ve already surrendered, that’s what you’ve done.”
Gorka said establishment media figures and top Democrats from President Joe Biden’s administration like Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin are doing the same thing to the general public in the United States right now.
“Look at what is happening right now in America. We have not just Jake Tapper on CNN using the phrase, ‘MAGA terrorism,’ we have the Department of Homeland Security issuing their first terrorism warning memorandum after the election targeting those who disagreed with the results of the election or who questioned them,” Gorka said. “We have the new Secretary of Defense, an absolute disgrace to the uniform he once wore, Lloyd Austin, talking about the ‘enemies’ in the ranks of the military who shut down our military for 60 days while he reviews the level of extremist penetration into our ranks. I guarantee you one thing, none of the extremists that SecDef Austin will find will be members of Antifa or BLM who took the lives of 40 people in the riots last year, half of them black like he is. This is the reality of America today and if you don’t talk out about it — you don’t have to have a national radio show, you don’t need to be editor-in-chief of the most influential conservative website. But if you’re an American and you care about the freedoms upon which it was built and for which Americans died and bled, and you don’t say the truth you are complicit and you are making the dehumanization of your fellow man all the more possible. That’s the crux of the matter.”
Hope is not all lost in America, though, Gorka said. Conservatives and Trump supporters and Americans across the board can fight back against cancel culture in much the same way he did with an example from this past week when a leftist employed at a major law firm in New York City sent him disparaging messages on Twitter.
“This Sunday, on my Twitter feed, my direct messages are open — that means anybody can direct message me if they wish to,” Gorka said. “That’s how you can keep in touch. Sunday, somebody who has a Twitter account in his own name… sent me the following messages, ‘I’m going to piss on your grave and send the photographs to your children.’ We did a little bit of research and found out who this person is and we verified where he works. He’s an accountant for one of the biggest accounting companies in New York and I proceed to message him back. I don’t say I’m going to piss on his grave, but as soon as I respond to him and I make it clear I know who he is, he blocks me from his account, he makes it private, and then he deletes it.”
Then, Gorka reached out to the man’s employer and asked about it. The CEO of the company apologized and disavowed what the man said, and apparently convened an all-hands company meeting to discuss what happened and what to do about it. Gorka said the man is no longer employed.
“I immediately dig up the email for his boss at Marcum LLP in New York and I send him the screenshots of the now-deleted account about what his employee said about me and my children and about wanting to urinate on my grave,” Gorka told Marlow. “To his credit, the CEO immediately emailed me back on a Sunday afternoon, apologized, and then on their social media accounts, they disavowed the words of Joe Wiley. I heard late last night from another follower who knows somebody who knows somebody that there was an all hands meeting at Marcum LLP on Monday morning and this individual has since been fired for his language. Now this isn’t cancel culture. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t do this to people who politically disagree with me. And I don’t tell people I politically disagree with that I want to piss on their graves and send the photographs to their children. But, if you use language like that, if you use vile, abusive language and involve my children, guess what Joe Wiley. I am going to let my voice be heard and I’m going to stand up for the truth. I know that thousands of others also went to the Marcum website and also went to their Instagram feed. That is why all of those feeds have been locked or closed. This is how you fight back — not with the dirty tactics they use because we believe in the truth. But you must not buckle under — it’s not just my voice, it’s everyone who stood for the truth the last four days. You cannot let them get away with it. You don’t have to run for public office although gosh could you imagine if every listener to your radio show decided to run for the local school board?”
Gorka also discussed the incident on his own program, here:
Gorka and Marlow concluded the conversation on cancel culture by discussing the popularity of both Trump and Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart. Of Trump and Breitbart, Gorka said, “there is a massive commonality between them.”
“Donald Trump, for all his mannerisms and style, never starts the fight,” Gorka said. “But if you bring the fight to him, he will finish it. He will fight back just as robustly as those who attack him. The commonality with Andrew is very simply this: Andrew, above all else, in addition to love of country, was motivated by the need, the burning sense of injustice when he witnessed bullies. What you are doing, what I am doing, what the president is doing, is fight back against those who start the abuse first. That is what all of us should be doing every single day. If you see a bully, whether it’s on the playground or on social media — I don’t care where it is — if you see one and you do nothing, I’m sorry you are part of the problem. Just stand up to the bullies and America will be a better place.”
Gorka advised Americans to put a sticky note on their desks that has the number 74 — representing the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2020, to signify they are not alone — and think of that anytime they see someone getting canceled or shut down. Instead of staying silent — and being part of the problem — Gorka advises Americans to start using their voices, a powerful tool protected under the First Amendment, to fight back.
“If you do it, you will have people who say, ‘oh my gosh, he spoke the truth. So can I,’” Gorka said. “It is a catalytic effect that you have when you speak up to the bullies and liars.”
LISTEN TO DR. SEBASTIAN GORKA ON BREITBART NEWS DAILY: