John Bolton delivered a brutal assessment of Sebastian Gorka, Donald Trump’s controversial pick as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism, as he responded to the president-elect’s announcement on Friday.
“Well, Sebastian Gorka is a con man,” Bolton, a former national security adviser under Trump, said in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
“I wouldn’t want him in any American government. Fortunately, it is not the highest position for which he was named. But I don’t think it bodes well for counterterrorism efforts if the senior director of the NSC is such a person.”
Gorka, who briefly served as deputy assistant to the president during Trump’s first term, made headlines in March 2017 after a report about his membership in a Hungarian far-right group with historical ties to Nazi Germany. Him later denied being a member of the group.
Notably, he has a history of controversial comments – special are Islamophobic views – and was once an adviser to Viktor Orbán, the far-right prime minister and authoritarian leader of Hungary, whom Trump has praised as “fantastic.”
Gorka was a contender recently Trump’s choice for deputy national security adviser would be, Politico reported last week, ahead of Alex Wong got the nod of the president-elect.
Trump described Gorka in a statement Friday as a “tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA movement.”
Bolton told Collins that the people Trump picks as deputy secretaries and undersecretaries will “tell Americans a lot about who actually runs the government.”
“Well, I’m telling you, he needs a deep FBI background check on his education claims and things like that,” said Bolton, who described Gorka as the “perfect example” of someone who owes his position “purely” to Trump.
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He continued: “He’s not showing loyalty, he’s showing loyalty and that’s what Trump wants. He doesn’t want Gorka’s opinion. He wants Gorka to say, “Yes, sir.” And I fully believe that this is exactly what will happen, no matter what Trump says.”