Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s former deputy assistant for strategy and current Defense advisor, warns of a Democratic election "steal" despite polls showing Harris nearly tied with Trump. He dismisses abortion as a winning issue, favoring state-level decisions over federal mandates, while praising Trump’s foreign policy pragmatism—like pressuring Zelensky to end the Ukraine war or maintaining the Abraham Accords to isolate Iran. Domestically, Gorka pushes for deregulation, military revival, prosecuting DEI/CRT programs, and targeting officials in political persecution cases, framing 2024 as a cultural and economic survival battle where Trump’s "kitchen table" focus on inflation and crime could dominate late-campaign voter concerns. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey, everyone, it's Andrew Clavin with this week's interview with Sebastian Gorka, Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
I always like talking to Gorka about the state of MAGA world because along with being a shockingly decent human being for a man who talks like a bond villain, he's a Trump loyalist, but also a very, very honest guy.
So I know I'm going to hear a defense of Trump's actions and what he's thinking about and where he's going, but I always hear it in an honest way, which I really appreciate.
He doesn't blow smoke at me, and that makes a big difference from most political interviews.
He was the deputy assistant for strategy to the president of the United States, who you will remember was Donald Trump.
He's currently a presidential appointee to the National Security Education Board at the Department of Defense.
And he's the host of America First, a nationally syndicated radio show on the Salem Radio Network.
He has had me on a couple of times, but usually the standard is much higher and it's a terrific show.
The Gorka Reality Check is the newest show on Newsmax TV, which is also great.
Sebastian Gorka, it's great to see you, Pal.
How are you doing?
Yeah, I'm doing very well, especially since I'm talking to the host of my favorite podcast.
Well, outside of my own, but I'm wondering where the gold MAGA hat is that I bought you, why you're not wearing it.
And I want to know, is your new book a bestseller even before it's been released?
I need to know these things.
You know, it's funny.
I forgot to bring in A, my book, A Woman Underground.
Why Not Wear The MAGA Hat?00:15:26
I forgot to put it in so I could put it in front of my camera.
And I also have that MAGA hat.
It's in my office, that golden MAGA hat.
I kind of, every now and again, I just lift it up like the orb, you know, in an Indiana Jones movie.
But I love that.
We should do it more.
I've got to have, I've got to convince Ben Shapiro and Jeremy they have to do a deep fake of the opening scene with the golden idol, but it's you as Indiana Jones and it's the gold MAGA hat that's been stolen.
That would be good.
And I could just see the MSM, the snakes and the darts coming out.
So here we are at this moment.
We've just come out of when we were recording.
We've come out of the DNC and I never cease to be amazed at the news media and how they degrade themselves, just enthusing over people like Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as if they were impressive.
But they made a complete fools of themselves in the bump, there was a little modest bump, I think, afterwards, but it was nothing compared to the ecstasy that we saw on the media.
The polls now show Trump and Kamala basically running neck and neck, which is, I think, what we would kind of expect at this moment.
The political season now begins in earnest.
How are you feeling about this election?
Well, I take nothing for granted.
This isn't about what they did in 2020.
I'm kind of bored with people saying, well, can you prove they stole things in 2020?
Wake up, okay?
Are you a cretin?
They've been stealing elections since Joe Kennedy, the bootlegger, stole the election for JFK, his son.
This is the only, I have traveled to many countries of this globe.
This is the only developed nation where there is a national joke about one of the political parties having dead people vote for them repeatedly.
I know no other nation that says, hey, do you know that the people of London are dead and they vote for the Labour Party?
We do that here in America with the Democrats of Chicago, of Philly, of Baltimore.
So let's be clear, the left steals elections.
I take nothing for granted at all.
As a Green Beret just told me, we fight like the third monkey trying to get on Noah's Ark.
That's what we do for the next two months.
As the president said at Butler, Pennsylvania in that, sorry, era-making photograph, that era-making 54 seconds, fight, fight, fight.
So I'm not going to do predictions because these bastards want to steal it.
The fact that they're not removing Bobby Kennedy from the ballots in the states where he has withdrawn, that's called cheating as well, by the way.
So God willing, we do our part.
President Trump is re-elected.
We can save the Republic, but it's going to be fight, fight, fight for the next two months.
It is amazing.
It doesn't speak to their confidence that they are trying to keep Kennedy on and trying to take Cornell West off.
I mean, it's just not, it doesn't say, oh, boy, this is a confident party.
It just feels they have this wrapped up.
So there is some.
Well, neither does the fact, and this is from Rich Barris and others, one of the few pollsters that I actually trust.
If everything was so hunky-dory, if the brat is going to win, why is she stealing our platform?
I mean, from not taxing tips to building the border wall, you don't steal the other party's platform if you think it's going really well.
Yeah, I trust her to build the border wall.
I just think it's going to be made out of Legos.
I think that's the only problem.
So I've been watching Trump really carefully because I feel that a lot of people are so have acclimated to him and they don't pay attention to him.
And he's a very, very shrewd operator.
He pays attention.
I pointed out before the Biden debate that he had developed a new discipline and that he might actually be able to let Biden destroy himself.
And he actually did.
I mean, that was not typical of Trump, that he's playing a little bit more political ball with people than he was before.
What are you seeing from him?
Are there things, if you could give him one piece of advice, you could call him on the phone, and I know you talk to him from time to time.
I mean, but if you could say, look, this is the one thing I think you should change, what would you tell him?
Well, I did call him recently and I told him he needs to get rid of, you know, Chris Lasavida.
And, you know, thank the good Lord, a few days later, my friend Corey Lewandowski was brought back in to manage the campaign, which is great.
Look, it's what I say on my show.
I think it came to me as I was ruminating after my wife and I, Katie, went to the convention in Milwaukee.
And I realized, and it just kind of hurts for people like you and me who are political junkies who eat, drink, and sleep this stuff.
Most Americans aren't political.
I mean, there's a shocking stat that between 18 and 28% of the electorate decides who they're going to vote on, vote for in the last eight days before the election.
Now think about that.
In the last week, you can go from Hillary to Trump.
I mean, that's like, that means they're apolitical.
They're not members of tribes.
We have our base.
They have their lunatic cult that believes a man can become a woman and we don't need borders.
And so as a result, where are elections won?
They're always one in the middle.
The undecided is the independents, the fence sitters.
So as a result, we don't need to talk policy in the last two months.
Okay.
We don't need to talk about, you know, the fractal return on interest rates and all that.
Forget about that.
We need to do what the president did when he came back onto Twitter for the first time just prior to the two-hour discussion from Elon Musk.
And I've been praying for this.
What did he do in that post?
He literally posted the question from Ronald Reagan.
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
That's the only question.
I had Alina Hubber, his amazing lawyer, on my show a few weeks ago, and she made it even more trenchant.
She took that long question and she said, this is all you have to do.
Just ask your friends, your neighbors, how you doing?
How you doing?
After the last three and a half years, how are you doing?
Kitchen table, not policies.
And what are the three things that are most aggravating to all Americans right now if they live in the real world?
Open border.
I mean, just shockingly, tens of millions.
Crime, the two are inextricably linked.
And lastly, the economy, which is also linked.
So stick to kitchen table.
When the president recently posted on Truth this little video from Bedminster where he walked along a table with staples of life, flour, eggs, bacon, and he said, this was the price four years ago.
This is what it is today.
That's all he needs to talk about.
Hammer that home again and again and again.
And then maybe just repost these videos of black voters who saying, I mean, that woman on MSNBC was it last week who started crying because she said, I'm a paralegal.
Why do I have to choose between my children eating and me eating?
Because we can't both eat because I can't afford to feed us both.
Boom, gut punch.
Kitchen table, kitchen table.
But he gets it.
This is the amazing thing about reading the newspapers, watching TV, is this idea that the people don't realize how good the economy is.
It never occurs to them.
It never occurs to them to say it's good for me because I'm in the top 20%, but it's not good for people who don't have the investments and the salary I have.
It's unbelievable.
And then the same people wonder where Donald Trump came from, you know, who he's speaking for.
He's speaking for the people they hate.
So I'm sure you've played it on numerous occasions.
There is no better exemplar of the bi-coastal elites and the rest of America, the people represented by JD Vance's story in Hill Billy Elegy.
In that recent primary, what was it, six weeks ago, you had Jen Saki, former White House press secretary.
You had Rachel Maddow, and you had the lunatic with the Hitler-Jugend haircut, Joy Reed, sitting there watching the exit poll results as people were coming out of the primaries.
And Jen Saki, I mean, who's, you know, if a plank, if a piece of wood had a brain, it would be smarter than her.
She says, she says the people's number one concern in the exit polls in Virginia is illegal immigration.
I live in Virginia and we're not a border country.
I don't understand.
And then Rachel Maddow goes, well, they have a border with West Virginia.
Titter, titter, titter.
Let them eat cake.
I mean, is there a better example of the utter contempt they feel for tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans?
What do you mean you're bothered by illegal migration?
I had my foie gras today in my lovely French restaurant in Georgetown.
How absurd?
It's absolutely true.
It is absolutely true.
And the fact that they can't see it and there's no one there to tell them that they can't see it is just amazing.
Now, one of the reasons I, you know, I strange to say, I actually enjoy talking to you.
One of the reasons that I you only like smoking my cigars.
Well, I love smoking cigars.
You might rent the most exclusive cigar club in America for free.
Okay.
Just fess up, okay?
You do.
And you always, you're very generous with your cigars.
But I also like to bring you in because so I can run things by you that bother me about Trump and hear and hear your why they don't know.
Butler, Pennsylvania, you did the most MAGA video the world has ever seen.
You're not shooting over yourself.
Well, you know, he is the man.
He's 70%.
He is the man.
You're not going to change him, but go ahead.
All right.
So yesterday, he, and I really sympathize with this.
He seems to be flailing on the subject of abortion.
I totally understand that we have failed to move the culture on abortion so that when, because of Donald Trump, they overturned Roe v. Wade, which was a great blow for semi-decency in this country.
But we still have people who think that exterminating the life of an unborn child is somehow a human right.
or women's health care, whatever they're calling it.
So yesterday he comes on and he says he's going to vote for a measure in Florida to extend the amount of time you can get an abortion.
And also he's going to make sure that the government pays for in vitro fertilization when he gets elected.
And this just seemed to me like a flail.
It seemed to me like he's reaching for an audience that's never going to vote for him.
And he's trying to find a place to stand.
Even his campaign walked it back saying he hasn't decided how he's going to vote.
How does he handle this?
I get the problem, but how does he handle it?
Look, you have to understand on this issue.
And I discussed it.
I was at Mar-a-Lago when he was actually about to record that video he did on abortion a few months ago.
And I'll say publicly the advice I gave him then, because I've said it on my radio show.
It's very simple.
Look, I'm a cradle Catholic.
I thought I would go to my grave with Roe v. Wade on the books.
The idea that I'm 53 years old and the most heinous piece of murderous pseudo-law was thrown onto the ash heap of history because of the president's nominees to the Supreme Court.
God is good.
Okay.
And any, and I see people I know who have been, you know, famous pro-lifers attack the president and bitch and moan.
Shut the hell up.
If you couldn't get rid of Roe v. Wade, stick your head up your backside, okay?
He doesn't have to prove his credentials on pro-life to anyone.
Get a grip.
Okay.
Also, do you want to win elections?
And what I said to him is, sir, you've dealt with this question.
It's done.
We are a republic of states.
You've done the most beautiful thing, which should be in fact what we do with most things except interstate commerce and war.
Everything else should be the remit of the state.
You have thrown this crucial issue on the basis of subsidiarity back to the people in the states.
If California wants to be a satanic hellhole of baby death, let Californians decree that.
If Texas and Tennessee wants to ban all abortions, including for rape and incest, let the people of those states so decree.
So number one, we've done it.
States decide.
And then secondly, because, you know, my wife, Katie, is now the chair of the biggest county for the GOP in Virginia, for Fairfax.
And she gets this all the time.
People come up and say, what do we say about abortion?
Do we say anything or do we run away from it?
And I say, what do you mean run away from it?
The other side are sacrificing to Moloch and Beelzebub.
Talk about them.
Talk about the fact that you cannot say last trimester, no abortions, please, and be a Democrat.
Talk about Ralph Northam, a pediatrician.
I mean, think of a stinking pediatrician who has the governor of Virginia says, oh, yeah, if the baby survives abortion, put it on a table and decide whether you can kill it afterwards.
Talk about the diabolical prince of darkness cult they are after you've said, oh, by the way, states should decide.
That's my advice to the president then.
And it remains my advice to all Republicans who are pro-life and serious on this issue.
Okay, fair enough.
So that was what that is what you would tell him to do.
And because I don't mind him saying leave it to the states.
I mean, ultimately, this is a cultural fight.
We're going to have to convince people.
And that's Republicans hate doing that.
And there's a deeper thing.
And I know the integralists and the crypto Christian fascist movement, you know, they want to have the feds fix it all.
Guys, if you want the feds to fix it, you're not a conservative.
Right.
I mean, this is the massive disconnect.
If a conservative says they're conservatives and we want a federal ban on abortion, you ain't a conservative.
Okay.
Yeah.
Look in the mirror.
I wish that Trump had said that.
I mean, this is, I just feel like he's reaching, you know, he loves.
I'll be honest with you, and I won't say anything more.
He's not comfortable with this issue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because he's being pummeled.
He's being pummeled by the evangelicals who say, oh, even in rape, the woman must be forced to have the baby.
Biden's Despicable Middle East Policy00:10:22
And he's going, what?
Right?
He's being pummeled by them.
And then he grew up in Manhattan, right?
And he understands there are exigencies, right?
As far as I'm concerned, as a Catholic, all abortion is evil.
There's no mother or the baby.
You try and save both if there's a medical emergency.
But guys, and I can't believe I'm saying this to you because I hammer you for doing this all the time.
You have to be a little bit pragmatic.
Yes, you do hammer me for my realism all the time.
Well, you know, I thought about that because we always get in this discussion where I am pragmatic about politics.
I understand that you have to win and winning sometimes means, you know, doing pragmatic things.
But I was thinking about this the other day that one of the reasons I think we disagree is that your specialty is foreign policy.
And in foreign policy, there's a lot more of a black and white.
I mean, either you're fighting with somebody or you're not, either they're your friend or you're not.
It's not the same thing.
Whenever I hear people say politics is war, I think, no, in war, you kill your enemy.
In politics, you have to convince your enemy, which is a much, much different project.
So let's talk about foreign policy for a minute.
But can I just, on that thread?
Yeah.
I think that is a likely explanation for our division or our prisms that, you know, mine is informed by national security and yours is about domestic politics.
But let me just throw that back at you.
That would be the case if we're living in a normal age.
And I want to doff my cap to you because one of the last times we met, we discussed my colleague and my boss, Steve Bannon.
And you said, let's go visit him in prison.
Now, I haven't told you this, but he's reached out to me and he said, no, don't visit me.
We don't have time for that crap.
Now, if Steve Bannon, who is a political prisoner, says we don't have time for that, it is actually war domestically.
We have a political war domestically.
And the idea that pragmatism should be on the scales, not really, because you know, Drew, that that could be you or me in prison, not just Stephen.
And not because we committed a crime, but because we're effective conservatives and we have people who listen to us.
We could be in prison with Steve.
And as a result.
I agree that it's we have crossed the Rubicon.
Well, except we haven't in the sense that we're not going to go out and take arms up against our fellow Americans, not yet.
No, I agree with you, but our biggest disagreement usually is around making FTSE with the rhinos, all right?
And I'm saying, no, they're scum.
They should all go to hell, right?
I mean, can they vote for us in hell?
Can they vote for us in hell?
If they're Democrats, they can.
Sorry, you wanted to talk about foreign policy?
Yes.
So, you know, Donald Trump went for four years without starting a war, which seems to be some kind of American record.
And this is weird for a warmonger.
I know, well, a warmonger and a tyrant who's Hitler.
I think it was kind of, he's been very bad Hitler.
He's a very bad opinion Hitler.
But now we have a serious, serious situation brought on by Biden's weakness and his hesitancy.
We've got, you know, this thing in the Middle East, which is just could really ignite.
And in Ukraine, we have, you know, Putin's a genuinely bad guy, but there are questions about where we go.
How do we get out of this?
How do we get out of this mess that Biden has gotten us into?
Elect President Trump.
I mean, it really isn't a hyperbole.
I mean, I guarantee you, having watched the man, seen his preternatural skills when it comes to strategy, whether it's him whacking 300 Russians in Syria and Putin craps his pants or dropping 52 cruise missiles on a Syrian air base full of chemical weapons and telling Xi Jinping over chocolate cake, you know what I just did in Syria.
The guy is just, he knows, I'm going to put an article on my substack soon on what we call a surgical strength.
It's what Katie and I came up with.
His principle isn't intervention or boots on the ground.
It is the devastating use of force when necessary.
And also behind closed doors rhetorically.
I guarantee you, if President Trump is elected by the afternoon of January 20th next year, the presidents of Ukraine and Russia will have been spoken to behind closed doors.
And President Trump will tell Zelensky, I know it's tough and I know you've lost Crimea, but you will negotiate now.
The bloodshed ends.
You will negotiate.
Otherwise, no support from me.
And he says to Vlad, Vlad, ceasefire, peace treaty now.
And if you don't, what we have given Ukraine in the last three years will look like an old ham sandwich and we will give them everything.
And I guarantee you, they will so crap their pants that the shooting will have ended within 24 hours.
All right.
I'm going to hold you to that, but I think that's at least that sounds like a plan as opposed to what we're doing now.
What about in Israel?
I mean, Trump to me was one of the best friends Israel ever had.
The Abraham Accords were a, as somebody said, they weren't even, they didn't even do anything new.
They simply brought some standing arrangements out into the public, out into the open.
They did something really new, really new.
And I give credit to Jared for this.
Because when Jad was made the chief negotiator, look, I have 20 plus years in national security and counterterrorism.
Jared has nothing.
He's a very successful businessman.
And I went to him, I said, Jared, you want me to spin you up?
You want me to give you a background briefing on the Middle East and who the bad guys are and blah, blah, blah.
And he said to me, to his credit, I didn't take it personally because it's to his credit.
He said, sorry, Sebastian, I'm not going to listen to anyone.
I need to go there and seat for myself and talk to these people.
And that's what he did with Jason Greenblatt, with the amazing David Friedman, our ambassador.
And he learned the hard way.
You know what the novelty was?
A year in, everything's foggy bottom and the State Department had told them and the expert class said, you can't have peace in the Middle East unless you talk to the Palestinians.
They said, nope, bad faith actors, they don't get a seat at the table.
So they went to everyone else and shot them out and said, guys, you're a bunch of lunatics who teach or kill kids that all Jews are going to die and have to be killed.
When you stop teaching your kids that all Jews should be killed, then you have a seat at the table.
That's why we had the Abraham Accords, because we said you are unfit to negotiate with.
But now the fighting is kinetic.
I mean, how do we get to the point?
It seems to me what Biden is doing in the Middle East is despicable, that he's basically telling the Israelis they can't win against an enemy who is set on, openly set on destroying them.
What would Trump do differently?
Well, nothing differently.
We would continue to do what we did in the first four years.
I mean, people don't understand.
We had the most swinging sanction regime on the fascistic state of Iran the world had ever seen.
In 18 months, the stock market of Iran had lost more than 50% of its value because of our sanctions.
At the end of the Trump administration, that theocratic fascist regime was on the brink of economic collapse.
If we'd had another two years or three years, it would have collapsed and the Persian, the proud Persian people would have taken their country back, not because we invaded, not because of some lunatic neocon, whatever, but the people of Persia would have liberated themselves.
And let me tell you this.
When that happens, the Middle East will look like paradise, because the real threat to stability.
And to us, think about it.
A Pakistani was just arrested with money from Iran that was to fund an assassination plot against President Trump.
These are our enemies as well as the Jews.
So we continue our policy of bringing the mullahs to their knees so the Iranian people can take their country back.
And then from Somalia on down, the Houthis, all these proxies, Chizbullah Hamas, collapse because we're not giving Iran billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
And the regime itself has collapsed.
So they can't prosecute proxy wars or kill more Jews on Jewish soil.
So the answer is, you know, Trump won redux.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, it is amazing to me, this Obama fantasy that somehow Iran could be brought into this, you know, the world of nations.
Well, it's even simpler than that.
And your interview with Mike Duran was superb, and he gets it.
But, you know, there's even a simpler version of why Obama did what he did.
They're more, I mean, look, the left are sons of bitches.
I mean, they are organized ideological fanatics, but they're also morons.
They don't have a brain amongst them.
There's not one VDH.
Name for me one VDH or one Gingrich on their side.
Zip.
They've gone.
They don't exist.
And Obama actually believed, think of this, the Iran deal was, you know, these Sunni extremists are getting really strong.
Al-Qaeda, ISIS, they're kind of, you know, they disturb the balance of the feng shui in the Middle East.
So let's pump up this Shia extremists.
So we'll have a balance of extremists.
This is how cretinous these people are.
Look at Jake Sullivan.
I wouldn't trust the National Security Advisor to make me a cappuccino.
That's the national security.
And that's, could you remember Kissinger?
That guy is supposed to be Kissinger.
Why They're Morons00:03:17
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's an amazing.
I've still, I mean, even Mike, Mike did the best job I've ever heard of giving an explanation of what was going through Obama's mind, but it's still just chibber jabber to me.
It's amazing.
All right, I'm running out of time, but give me what you want from Trump in the first 100 days domestically.
What do you hope to see from him?
Read Joe Pollack's book.
You interviewed him recently, my former bar colleague.
You've got 200 actions there.
What do I want?
Drill, drill, drill.
I want the monkey off the back of American businesses and American citizens and taxpayers.
I want the military revitalized.
I want DEI CRT made a crime.
You will be fired if you teach it, if you practice it in federal government.
The idea that Fort Bragg, I have a general friend of mine, his son comes back from teaching as a Green Beret the Estonians how to do irregular warfare if Russia invades.
He's training little Estonia to survive another Russian onslaught.
He comes back to Fort Bragg, not Fort Liberty, you scumbags, Fort Bragg, and he goes into mandatory pronoun training as a Green Beret.
I mean, cognates, end of film, just stop.
No, bastard.
And then beyond that, the most important thing, and maybe I could have a role in this, you know, it's not the deep state anymore, Drew.
It's the in-your-face state.
We have to have those who have used the power of the most powerful government in the world to politically persecute their fellow Americans stand trial for those abuses, whether it's a 73-year-old grandmother put in prison because she prayed in an abortion clinic, or whether it's the people who caused the death of Matt Perner, a beautiful young man who walked peacefully through Congress on January the 6th,
was on a misdemeanor trespass charge.
And when they gave him his court date on the anniversary of his mother's death, they told him, you know what?
We've got this other thing we used against those guys in Wall Street.
We're going to turbo up your charges to a terrorist charge, and you're going to get 20 years.
So, what does beautiful Matt Perner do?
Hangs himself.
The prosecutors who said we're going to do that to a man who walked around Congress, they need to stand trial in front of a jury of their peers.
Sebastian Gorka, always hard to get him to talk.
He's a shy, retiring guy who doesn't like to express his opinions too bluntly.
But if you want to hear more of him, he is on Salem Radio every day on the News Max TV.
Always a great show.
Sebastian, always love talking to you.
It's great to see you.
Thank you for coming on.
Too much fun.
And check out especially my piece on Butler, Pennsylvania at my substack, sebastiangorka.substack.com.
Thanks, Joe.
Always love talking to that guy.
I mean, he's clear in what he thinks, but also is honest.
He doesn't deceive about who people are and where they're going.
I think you get a very clear sense of MAGA world from him.
And it's a good thing to see.
We'll be back on Friday with the Andrew Clavin Show.