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Gorka rips Trump’s Cabinet and White House team on way out

By Jonathan Easley - 08/28/17 03:27 PM EDT

Sebastian Gorka, the former special adviser to President Trump who was forced out over the weekend, railed against his former colleagues in a string of interviews on Monday, warning that the president’s vision for the country is being corrupted by interlopers.

In a Monday interview on Fox News Radio’s “Brian Kilmeade Show,” Gorka said he was determined to resign after Trump’s speech about bolstering troop levels in Afghanistan failed to mention the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.

“The fact is I knew after the Afghan speech that the anti-MAGA [Make America Great Again] forces were in ascendance,” Gorka said.

“Not one mention of radical Islam in that speech that was written from the president. So last week I emailed General Kelly, I said I wanted to meet with him today on Monday because I will be resigning effective Friday, last Friday. I spoke to him on the telephone on Friday and said that I am resigning today and I reinforced that with an email.

“That’s how it happened because I realized I work for Steve Bannon, he’s gone and the wrong people are at the helm of policy issues,” Gorka said. “We will right that ship from the outside but for the time being the best I can do is to be effective as a private citizen.”

The Federalist first reported that Gorka had resigned on Friday night, but White House officials disputed that characterization, insinuating that he had been fired by chief of staff John Kelly.

Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, was forced out of the White House a week before Gorka and was also handed his walking papers by Kelly. Both Bannon, who maintains that he resigned, and Gorka will return to Breitbart News.

Also on Monday, Gorka criticized national security adviser H.R. McMaster in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, saying McMaster has a liberal worldview on the threat posed by radical Islamic extremists.

McMaster “sees the threat of Islam through an Obama administration lens, meaning that religion has nothing to do with the war we are in,” Gorka said.

“He believes — and he told me in his office — that all of these people are just criminals,” Gorka said. “That is simply wrong.”

Gorka also questioned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s credentials in the interview with Kilmeade. Tillerson was once CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp.

“I’m a bit puzzled,” Gorka said.

“I don’t expect counterterrorism expertise from a former oil industry mogul, but to say that the president’s speech on Afghanistan shouldn’t be about radical Islamic terrorism, it should be about all forms of terrorism,” Gorka said.

“Brian, I would like to hear the secretary tell me about all the animal rights terrorists or the white supremacists terrorists that are coming out of the Hindu Kush or Tora Bora. I’m a little bit confused by what he said because it doesn’t make any sense.”

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Tillerson disputed Gorka's claim that the president's team removed any references to "radical Islamic terror" from his Afghanistan speech.

"He’s completely wrong," Tillerson said. "And I think it shows a lack of understanding of the president's broader policy when it comes to protecting Americans at home and abroad from all acts of terrorism. Terrorism, as we've said, manifests itself in many types of organization."

Tillerson also disputed the notion that there are divisions within the White House between Trump's campaign loyalists and those they deem to be the "West Wing Democrats" or the "globalists."

"I don't see any division," he said. "I think it's a question of tactics and how you achieve those objectives. I think the president has been clear in his speech in Afghanistan that we are not undertaking nation-building."

Gorka added that the GOP establishment is mistaken to believe that Republicans won the 2016 presidential election, making a distinction between Trump voters and those that typically vote for the GOP.

“There is a broader issue here a really serious one,” he said. “The GOP thinks they won the election on Nov. 8 and they are very, very mistaken in that.

“Donald Trump may have been the formal Republican candidate, but he wasn’t the establishment’s candidate,” Gorka said. “He wiped the floor with all the establishment candidates who never took him seriously. … If the GOP thinks they won the election they will be sorely disappointed and they will pay the price come the next election.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/348308-gorka-rips-trumps-cabinet-and-white-house-team-on-way-out