Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s Islamophobic national security aide quits

Rasa - Sebastian Gorka, a notorious Islamophobe in the administration of US President Donald Trump, is leaving the White House, officials say.

News ID: 429367

Date: 01 May 2017 - 20:33

RNA - One senior administration official told CNN on Monday that Gorka, a National Security Council aide who has been under pressure over his links to Hungarian far-right groups, is expected to find a job outside the White House soon.

Another official said it is possible Gorka would get another opportunity in the administration, but insisted that he is more likely to leave the White House altogether in the coming days.

Gorka, a former counterterrorism analyst for Fox News and Breitbart's national security editor, joined the administration as a deputy assistant to President Trump. He has been working on the National Security Council and on the Strategic Initiatives Group.

The Strategic Initiatives Group was created by White House chief strategist Steve Bannon to run parallel to the National Security Council. Gorka has described the advisory panel as a focal point for task forces collaborating with people outside the government.

Gorka has served as a prominent Trump surrogate on cable news, vigorously defending his Muslim travel ban and the president's repeated use of the controversial phrase "radical Islamic terrorism."

In April, the British newspaper Guardian reported that Gorka attempted to push a plan to partition the Islamic nation of Libya into three parts.

He illustrated his idea of a partitioned Libya by drawing a picture on a napkin in a meeting with a senior European diplomat, showing how the North African country could be divided into three parts, according to the Guardian.

His proposed map reportedly cut Libya into three sections, apparently based on the old Ottoman provinces of Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the north-west and Fezzan in the south-west.

Shocked by the plan, the European diplomat responded that dividing Libya to smaller parts would be “the worst solution” for the war-torn country.

Gorka has close ties with Bannon, the former head of the far-right news outlet Breitbart. He supports the same extreme policies that Trump and Bannon have been pushing against Muslims.

847/940