World War Gorka

Mr. President: No One Voted for This

News comes this weekend that the ‘Department of War’ now has Nigeria in its crosshairs. Taking to Truth Social on Saturday, Trump let loose on the Nigerian government, warning that,

…If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities, I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians.”

In this administration some Christians are more cherished than others; Trump and Co. have shown zero sympathy for the scores of Palestinian Christians murdered by the IDF and Benjamin Netanyahu, a frequent and honored guest at the White House and on Capitol Hill. That aside, the planned Nigeria operation is clearly the product of the capacious imagination of Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s chief counter-terrorism adviser.

Who is this Gorka?

Before coming to the White House he was a radio host (“America First with Sebastian Gorka”) and a pitchman for Relief Factor, a dietary supplement. America First? An odd name for a program hosted by someone with British, Hungarian and American citizenship—and with probable ties to foreign intelligence. Those ties cost him a job during Trump’s first term. After his ignominious exit from the White House in 2017, Gorka spent the Biden interregnum glued to Trump’s side, appearing alongside a gaggle of future Trump II officials during Trump’s trial in New York.

If he has any talent at all (itself a debatable proposition) it is for ass-kissing. Here he is on Facebook in late September posting about Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s eulogy for Charlie Kirk:

I was born a Catholic and have walked this Earth for 54 years. Before dedicating a quarter of a century to Counterterrorism, my first degree was in Philosophy and Theology.

But I will say for the record, I have never seen a human being encapsulate in 90 seconds the meaning of Jesus Christ like Acting National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Thank you Sir.

No. Thank you, Sebastian.

Gorka is not merely a fool. He is a religious fanatic (there being significant overlap between the two categories).

Gorka believes he and his fellow zealots are “not the lambs of the Bible; that is Jesus, our savior. We turn over the tables of the moneylenders. We are there when he calls, ‘Sell everything you own and buy a sword.’” Gorka’s advice to Netanyahu after October 7th was": “Kill every single one of them. God bless Israel. God bless Judeo-Christian civilization.”

The scholar Michael Vlahos has described Gorka as “a subaltern mini-me of the emperor himself.”

But is the emperor now taking his cues from the subaltern? Perhaps. Only 2 months into Trump II, the New York Times reported deepening divisions between the newly christened counterterrorism chief, Gorka, and elements within the interagency over whether and how to respond to an Islamist insurgency in Somalia. Gorka eventually won out. During the first week of August, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), conducted airstrikes in central Somalia.

Turning close to home: Why, one wonders, is the peace president with the Nobel Prize very much on his mind, conducting a drone war in the Caribbean? Well, appearing on Newsmax this weekend, Gorka informed viewers that, “The connections of that regime, the Maduro regime, to other bad actors, other states, other nations who, for example, have been plotting to target members of this administration, including the president. Iran’s tentacles into this hemisphere go straight through Caracas and Venezuela.” Echoing Gorka, Sen. Lindsey Graham, reliable war propagandist that he is, took to the airwaves and called Maduro’s Venezuela a “drug caliphate.” The implications are impossible to miss, as the likes of Gorka and Graham seek to marry the War on Drugs with the War on Terror.

Call it World War Gorka.

James W. Carden is editor of TRR.