Sebestain Gorka Defend Trump's Insane Press Conference
Sebestain Gorka Defend Trump's Insane Press Conference
'You just committed fake news!'
'You just committed fake news!'
Evan Davies
Do you think his press conference was a bit unhinged?
Sebastian Gorka
I think it’s pathetic that the BBC would use words of that nature and also the adjective 'weird’. It’s only ‘weird’ to journalists like yourself who are biased.
Evan Davies
Did, for his initial words, which went on for quite a few minutes, had he made notes and prepared that or did he go in and busk it?
Sebastian Gorka
He’s fabulous on his feet so he doesn’t need to. If you watch his campaign rallies, this is the man who in any one day would go to nine different sites sometimes in four different states - he doesn’t need an autocue. He revels in this and what we saw today was the old Donald Trump from the campaign trail and it was fabulous.
Evan Davies
Did he game some of the questions with his team? Or did he just say ‘I’m just going to go out there and give him hell’?
Sebastian Gorka
Of course, the President doesn’t need to but he has a whole team of people here who write talking points. Believe it or not I have talking points for this interview, I don’t need to use them but we have a team that writes them.
Evan Davies
There was this moment in there where he made this claim, that his electoral college win was the biggest since Regan. Then it turned out Clinton, Bush and Obama all had bigger electoral college wins.
Evan Davies
I guess I’m interested in how a mistake like that creeps in because this is a man, President Trump, who looks carefully at these things. What was going on there? What do you think was going on when he made that mistake?
Sebastian Gorka
I think you’re getting a little bit obsessive yourself. If you actually listen to the tape which you just played he said ‘I guess I had the largest’. It wasn’t an unequivocal statement of fact. The bottom line is he trounced Hillary Clinton and it was organisations like CNN, The New York Times and even the BBC who said Clinton is a shoo-in.
Sebastian Gorka
The Huffington Post said she had a 92% chance of winning. That’s fake news and the BBC shouldn’t be a hostage to it.
Evan Davies
What’s really striking is, and it was striking in the press conference as well, is that there’s a tendency to leap back to the election campaign, to bang on about Clinton and her weaknesses like you just have.
Evan Davies
Does President Trump realise he won the election? He got fewer votes, but he won the election and he is the President now for goodness sake, he doesn’t have to keep banging on about Hillary Clinton.
Evan Davies
He’s the President, it look almost narcissistic, almost a bit childish to be talking the way he does in campaign mode when he’s the leader of the free world?
Sebastian Gorka
Only to journalists who don’t like him and have an agenda. Is he looking back? My gosh, I’ve been in this position less than a month and we’ve done more work in one month than the prior administration did in six months.
Sebastian Gorka
I mean the number of things we’ve achieved, whether it’s today with the coal miners, pushing back on the anti-coal mining policies of the Obama administration, whether it’s the immigration reform, whether it’s the infrastructure planning that we’ve released - it’s incredible the amount of work we’ve already done and to say we’re basking in a former glory - please, be a little bit more factual yourselves otherwise you’ll be accused of fake news as well.
Evan Davies
So you agree with the President that his White House is a fine-tuned machine and is operating well?
Sebastian Gorka
Let me tell you this - I’ve never worked at this rarified strategic level before. I’m a political appointee, I’m a commissioned official of the President, it’s incredible.
Sebastian Gorka
I come into work every day at seven o’clock, I open the newspapers and I can tell you that when I read a story that bears absolutely no resemblance to an issue that I was involved in, I was in the room the day before when it was being settled, eight out of nine times it’s fabricated. And all of these anonymous sources - I’m sad to say that you and your colleagues have fallen into this trap of fake news.
Evan Davies
It’s not fake news, we’re trying to understand what’s going on there. We’re not making factual claims a lot of the times we're asking questions that you don’t like
Sebastian Gorka
Ask away, it’s fine!
Evan Davies
Why did Donald Trump say on Friday that he knew nothing about Michael Flynn having spoken to the Russians about sanctions when he was President-Elect - why did he say that on Friday then on Sunday we learn that he had known about it for more than a couple of weeks?
Sebastian Gorka
You’re obsessing on issues that aren’t the point...
Evan Davies
I’m asking you a perfectly simple question, I’m not obsessing on it. I’m asking it once. Why did he say ‘I know nothing about that’ then on Monday we hear he had known about it for two weeks? Why did he say that? It’s a ‘fine-tuned machine’, you said it yourself.
Sebastian Gorka
I said the White house is working as a fine-tuned machine and it is. Your question was about the representation there’s a maelstrom in the White House and I answered it factually based upon my experience.
Sebastian Gorka
There isn’t any disorder or any chaos. Some people in the media would like there to be but there isn’t. I’m inside the building and I can tell you. Now what the President knew and when, please ask the President when you have an opportunity, I’m sure you have a BBC correspondent in the press room. I wasn’t in that meeting with General Flynn.
Evan Davies
Yesterday the President said he was open minded to different solutions on Israel-Palestine, today your ambassador Nikki Hayley at the UN, clarified to colleagues and other members there that the two-state policy remains the US objective.
Evan Davies
Why is there this constant confusion where the President speaks and then someone has to go round with a bucket and a shovel picking up the pieces trying to clarify to allies around the world. What is going on?
Sebastian Gorka
Your representation is just wishful thinking. If you didn’t have an agenda-driven question list it would be so much easier to have a better relationship with you.
Sebastian Gorka
The bottom line is ‘read the transcript’. Read the transcript of what the President said after the meeting with the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu]. It was unequivocal: ‘We remain committed to our ally Israel and any solution will have to be a solution that both sides come to.’
Sebastian Gorka
We’re not going to intervene. You need to stick to the facts.
Evan Davies
The fact is other people, not just me, other people are deeply confused and reported, not because they have an agenda, that there was a change in US policy.
Evan Davies
Nikki Hayley felt it necessary, as your ambassador, to clarify. Why are these types of mistake being made? Just before you answer that, another one today, Rex Tillerson was in a meeting with the French foreign minister and after the meeting the French, who think the policy is ‘worrying and confused’, thought your policy was to tear up the Tehran deal or look again at the Tehran deal. Rex Tillerson had to say ‘no I didn’t say that’
Evan Davies
It just gives a complete picture of utter shambles in which people are constantly having to correct statements or things that have been misunderstood. Is it everybody else’s fault, never your own?
Sebastian Gorka
No not at all it’s just there is an agenda-driven distortion. I mean come on, this is a mainstream media that has accused us in the White House of being anti-Semitic and white supremacist. This is how bad it is. This is a White House where Jared Kushner, an orthodox Jew, is key to the decision-making process and you have the audacity as mainstream media to talk about anti-Semitism. That’s why you want to spin it and we’re not going to stand for it.
Evan Davies
Just tell me where the BBC, CNN or The New York Times have, as a fact, said this is an anti-Semitic regime.
Sebastian Gorka
Look at the response to the Holocaust Memorial statement, I ask your viewers to Google it now.
Evan Davies
Right, that’s quite different to saying ‘anti-Semitic’.
Sebastian Gorka
Not at all, not at all. That’s what the response was, that for some anti-Semitic reason we didn’t explicitly use the words ‘the Jewish Holocaust’. It’s absurd!
Evan Davies
When the President says ‘the press is out of control’ and when you stand there and say for most of your answers ‘[the press] has an agenda and is fake news..'
Sebastian Gorka
Unprove (sic) it!
Evan Davies
Is it the case you will plan no action against the press? The press will be allowed to do its job exactly as it always has...
Sebastian Gorka
What are you intimating? This is fake news.
Evan Davies
It’s not at all, I’ve just asked a question.
Sebastian Gorka
You’ve just committed fake news. You are implying there is some dread intent. It’s absurd.
Evan Davies
I’m not, I’m asking if the President has any actions in mind. He said today the press is out of control, we need to talk about this and he hinted that he wasn’t going to put up with it. Now that might mean something as innocuous as ‘I’m going to communicate with everybody via Twitter’ or it might mean ‘I’m going to think about other things I can do’. Is it the latter?
Sebastian Gorka
All it means is that we’re going to continue to do what we did so very successfully and the thing that put the former real-estate billionaire into the White House and which is to break your sense on Monopoly on the news.
Sebastian Gorka
Mainstream media no longer gets to monopolise news, we’re going to go straight to the audiences. Whether it’s through Twitter or YouTube, we’re not going to put up with distortions and people who believe they have a monopoly on the truth just because they have 60 years of a letterhead above them.
Sebastian Gorka
We’re going to communicate with our audiences domestic and international, that’s what the President meant.