Former Deputy Adviser to the president Dr. Sebastian Gorka reviewed the foreign policy changes facing the Trump administration and looked ahead to the next steps for Donald Trump’s presidency, on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.
Gorka recommended strong support for President Trump on three key national security issues. “Number One, it’s ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ okay?” he began. “I don’t care where you served in the military, or how many stars you’ve got on your shoulder, it’s not a bunch of criminals. It is people committed to a radical ideology that is totalitarian and wishes to destroy Western civilization, the Judeo-Christian heritage. That’s all you need to know. The president has said this in front of Congress, in Riyadh, in Warsaw. We need to support him in that.”
“Secondly, the JCPOA deal cannot be reaffirmed,” he continued, using the official name of the Iran nuclear deal. “There is no reaccrediting, no clearance of it on the next phase, because it is dangerous. It facilitates Iran. It must not go through for a third time.”
He said the deal “gave billions of dollars to Iran” but “did not stop them acquiring nuclear capability, just kind of slowed them.”
“I was in the room with Steve, with the president, with Rex Tillerson, with H.R. McMaster, with Mnuchin, and I can tell you the president was on our side. He was on Steve’s side and my side,” Gorka reported.
“We’re going to be doing some stuff on the outside that will make it very difficult, if not nigh-impossible, for those who wish to maintain the establishment view of the JCPOA, the Iran deal, to push it through a third time,” he vowed.
“And then lastly, I have to say I owe a debt of gratitude to Steve for educating me in the last eight months on one issue. He’s hardcore on the Islamic jihadi threat. So am I. That’s what I built my reputation on. But when it comes to the long-term threat to America, it’s China,” Gorka said.
“The launch of the 1301 investigation on the theft of intellectual property by Chinese state concerns is an incredibly good start. We must continue to apply pressure to China. As such, we’re going to do some things on the outside to educate the people of America, to make sure the Hill goes in the right direction, and to make sure that China no longer threatens us economically,” he said.
“ISIS will be dealt with. We will crush it. To quote a first-tier operator, a Tier One operator who spoke to me recently about what we’re doing in Iraq and Syria, we are stacking them like cordwood. They will be obliterated. Other nations like Russia, not a problem. Spoilers: they’re stirring, they’re exploiting the lack of leadership for the last eight years, but not a direct threat existentially to the United States. If you look at who has a plan outside of Iran, to dominate in all aspects, it’s China,” he explained.
Gorka recommended listeners research China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, also known as the “New Silk Road” project, to get a sense of Chinese plans for “hegemonic dominance in all areas, especially economic.”
“They are executing economic warfare against us right now,” he warned. “That is our long-term threat, and that is what we’re going to help support. The president has seen the light. We gave him some classified briefings on China. He now realizes how massive this issue is. We’re going to support him from the outside.”
Gorka said there are “some great people out there who know what they’re talking about and haven’t bought into the Silicon Valley-Big Business, ‘Hey, it’s such a great market, we’ve got to work with them’” mindset.
“Washington, the Hill, Big Business — especially IT and others — have said, ‘Well, we can’t do anything about it, and we need access to those markets.’ Wrong. Read people like Michael Pilsbury. Look at the books by Peter Navarro. They understand one thing: China sees itself as a culture, as a civilization, that is millennia old, and they look at the last hundred years as a blip. They see the last hundred years as them being embarrassed by the West, and they are coming back,” Gorka warned.
He added that he would leave it to expert Sinologists to determine whether China’s belief in its historic economic power is entirely accurate, but the important point is that a comparison of current purchasing parity power between China and the United States is not favorable to America.
“I don’t want to scare anybody, but the Chinese economy is bigger than America’s,” he pointed out.
Marlow turned to Afghanistan, citing the Pentagon’s embarrassing admission that troop levels in that country are almost 50 percent higher the American people were led to believe as evidence that we are being asked to support policy changes without honest and accurate information from our government.
“We had some amazing meetings in the Situation Room with the president and his principal Cabinet members, also in the tank in the Pentagon and Afghanistan, before I left, before Steve left,” Gorka recalled. “The president was masterful because he addressed exactly these issues. He asked the key questions: ‘What assumptions are you working on?’ He was given these briefing packets, these PowerPoints. When you read time and time again assumptions, open-source assumptions, the ‘federal government of Afghanistan’ — we asked the question, ‘What federal government of Afghanistan?’”
“We’ve inherited 16 years of bad thinking, and the president sees through it,” he said. “Those who can support him to give him the right policy options have moved outside the building, but we’re going to provide the right policy options from our new perches with far greater freedom.”
“The president still gets it,” Gorka asserted. “He was very unhappy with everything. We had seven meetings on Afghanistan at the level of principals that were rehashing the old, worn-out, retread policies of the last 16 years, and the president was not satisfied. We opened the door to people who know what they’re talking about and know how much the cost to America is. That’s what we’re going to continue to support in the future.”
Gorka said it was vital to maintain pressure from outlets like Breitbart News to “counter the mainstream media’s narrative on what has been achieved as part of MAGA.”
“We’re going to win. This is about the long game,” he predicted with confidence. “Look at illegal migration. Look at the economy. What are we, on the 27th record for the U.S. economy and the stock market since January the 20th? Look at everything else that’s happened.”
“Don’t get lost in the miasma of the Fake News-industrial complex,” he advised. “Talk about the reality and use that as ammunition to support the MAGA agenda.”
In response to a caller glum about the prospects of President Trump being diverted from his agenda by advisers who don’t believe in it, Gorka cited Trump’s background as the son of a small businessman to argue that he remains determined to see it through.
“That’s what formed Donald Trump’s understanding of America. He didn’t go from the Ivy League to Goldman Sachs. He watched his father build homes for fellow Americans. As a result, the man who matters the most gets it, and he will make sure that you and other business people in America who are the backbone of our economy will be protected and will be allowed to thrive,” he assured the caller.
“It’s about prosperity for the president, prosperity for all of us,” Gorka said.
He agreed with another caller’s contention that the Trump administration has a major problem with leaked information, including leaks of Gorka’s own departure from the White House.
“Every administration at the highest level has leaks to the press on tactical issues with somebody you don’t like,” Gorka reflected. “But when it comes to 125 national security leaks, 62 of which Congress has deemed to be very serious — we have a sevenfold increase in the number of leaks during the Obama administration or during the Bush administration.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re unveiling national security secrets as a government employee, that’s treasonous, and the full weight of the law should be used against you,” he declared. “You should be frog-marched, perp-walked, out of the Eisenhower building, stand in an orange jumpsuit, and be prosecuted if you’re leaking national security information.”
“The idea that the president, the most powerful man in the world, can’t have a private phone call with another head of state is scandalous. That’s the Permanent State, that’s the modern mainstream media,” Gorka added.
Gorka agreed with a final caller’s contention that the United States would currently be at war with Syria if Hillary Clinton had become president.
“Don’t mention it. We’re just here trying to do some good,” he said to the caller’s opinion that he, Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump were “heroes” for avoiding war in Syria. “The President of the United States was clear during the campaign and hasn’t changed. The idea that we go and invade other people’s countries to change them is fundamentally un-American.”
“We have lost thousands of lives in the last 16 years, spent trillions of dollars. To what gain? What has it done for the average American?” Gorka asked.
He said President Trump is “very clear-eyed on this.”
“He constantly pushes back. Syria is not ours to solve. We will help people, but it is not ours to put American boots on the ground,” Gorka said.
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