The Scene
Last week, the president’s senior director for counter-terrorism said something that surprised and frightened some liberals. In a Newsmax interview, Dr. Sebastian Gorka said that Democrats who were rallying for Kilmar Ábrego García were “on the side of the terrorists.”
What did that mean? The Trump administration was using every available tool to hobble ideological opponents in academia, law practices, and the business world. This week, the president acted on a long-discussed plan to probe ActBlue, the main donation processor for Democrats and liberal campaigns, over how it screened for foreign money. The administration was invoking “terrorism” when it prosecuted anti-Tesla vandals; what was next?
In an interview with Semafor’s Shelby Talcott, at the World Economy Summit in DC, Gorka said that the “gutter press” had gotten him wrong; it was the Biden administration, not this one, that used anti-terror tools against political enemies.
This is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation.
The View From Dr. Sebastian Gorka
Shelby Talcott: A year from now, how will you know if your strategy against the Houthis worked? Will Red Sea shipping lanes be open?
Sebastian Gorka: Don’t ask me questions about economics, but I’ll talk to you about national security and where it touches upon it. It’s very clear. The President has defined for us what victory looks like, with regards to the Houthis, and it means freedom of maritime transit through that strait, all the way through the Red Sea and to the Suez Canal. When we briefed the President that we have US ships being attacked 147 times in the last year through that Strait, the fact that a US-flagged vessel has not been allowed to travel unmolested off the shore of Yemen for more than 18 months, he said: That is unconscionable. That will not be allowed to stand.
Are you confident that that is something you guys are going to be able to achieve
completely?
We are. There was a French writer who coined the term, maybe 10 years ago. He said: America is not a superpower, America is a hyper power. There is nobody that can touch us in the classic metrics of strength. You look at twelve nuclear aircraft carriers and more special forces than most nations have actual soldiers writ large. So, yes, the idea that the Houthis can stand up to a sustained campaign from the president and from then our regional allies, that’s just not reasonable.
You’re reportedly working on a national strategy to counter domestic terrorism. Can you give us some more details on that?
Right now, I’m in the final stages of drafting the US national security policy for terrorism writ large. I hope to have the first draft in front of my colleagues within a month.
How is yours going to differ from the Biden administration’s? Is there going to be more of a focus on left-wing extremism and terrorism? Are you going to address Tesla attacks, for example?
Utterly, completely. Whether you’re trying to kill human beings, or whether you’re using a Molotov cocktail against a car dealership because you disagree with the founder politically: All of those are acts of terrorism. People lie about terrorism. You’ve heard the hoary aphorism, the cliché, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter? That is garbage. That is Bravo, Sierra. It is crap. Whenever you use force for political purposes, against the innocent, against a legitimate regime, you are using terrorism.
So, the difference between the strategies couldn’t be starker. We will be focusing on real threats, not made-up threats. We will not be using a counterterrorism enterprise against those who politically disagree with us simply because they’re supporters of President Trump. We’re not going to allow the counter-terrorism tools that we’ve inherited to be used against 72-year-old grandmothers who are protesting outside Planned Parenthood abortion clinics. That ended as soon as Pam Bondi, my friend Kash Patel, took over at DOJ, at the FBI. So the political distortion of counterterrorism for the purposes of one party is over.
When it comes to US counterterrorism strategy, it’s going to be threat-based. We’re going to go back to basics. The majority of the threats we face are jihadi terrorists. Whether they be Sunni or Shia, we are going to focus on the global jihadi threat, which, sadly, under the last administration, has increased significantly. The shameful Biden surrender of Afghanistan. And when it comes to the cartels, Stephen Miller, the Homeland Security Advisor, and his team are focusing on the fact that for four years, we were borderless.
You recently sparked a debate over whether critics of the administration policy should be charged with material support for terrorism. You’ve said you were speaking literally about financial support, but do you plan to expand the definition of material support to include praise for designated terrorist groups?
It may shock you that those articles from gutter press rags like the Politico had nothing to do with statements of support. What I said was, if you are actually supporting a threat group, a designated FTO, foreign terrorist organization, you have committed a felony. So, let me give you an example from this city. Six, seven years ago, a Metropolitan Transit Police officer decided he’s gonna send $500 to ISIS. He was ideologically aligned with ISIS. The person he was giving the $500 to was actually an FBI asset. That police officer is today sitting in a supermax prison because he materially supported an FTO. That is a felony.
So if you are supporting one of the six cartels or the two gangs we have designated, if you are providing succor or aid to Al Qaeda, to Al Nusra, to ISIS, you are committing a felony, and we’re going to take that deadly seriously.
In February 2024, you wrote a piece for The Daily Caller titled The Case for Ukraine. You compared Ukrainians “fighting for their freedom” to colonists in what would become the United States. What’s changed since then in terms of how you view Russia’s war in Ukraine?
For me, personally? Nothing. For those who aren’t familiar with my background, my parents escaped communist Hungary in 1956. My father was rotting in a political prison with a death sentence at the age of 20. I have a bit of baggage with that. And with regards to the Ukraine war: Yeah, Ukraine was invaded, and as such, it is right for us to support that nation, to reestablish its independence.
Where am I today? The only thing that has changed for me is, I’m a little bit disturbed by what I witnessed in the Oval [Office]. President Trump is absolutely right. The National Security Adviser, the first ever Green Beret to serve in that position, is right, when he called it a meat grinder. It has to stop. And I’d like to see both sides come to the table, as President Trump has given them an opportunity to do. I’m a little bit disappointed with Kyiv, as much as I’m disappointed with Moscow.
This is something that the Director of National Intelligence alluded to in her testimony, but I’m hoping you can expand on it. Does the intelligence community have any evidence of foreign funds of pro-Palestinian protests in the US?
Not that I could mention, on an open stage and outside of a SCIF.