The War for America's Soul Page 13

  GORKA: Well, there are a lot of homegrown patriots on Fox. Sean Hannity, the first among them, but also Tucker Carlson, Ed Henry, Mark Levin, and others. But yes, it is notable that legal immigrants to America—like Dinesh D’Souza and myself—are so adamant, so vociferous in our love of all things American and the freedoms that we were provided when we came here. But this should surprise no one.

  Read Tocqueville: it really does take the exterior perspective, the perspective of the individual coming from the outside to understand just how truly blessed and special a nation we are. If you didn’t choose to be an American, if you were born here, it’s very hard to understand at all what it takes for a Cuban to risk getting on a raft in shark-infested waters with his family, and to try to make it almost a hundred miles across the sea, across open waters, to freedom, to America. What it takes for the blind lawyer, Chen Guangcheng in China to escape house arrest, climbing across the roofs of his neighbors shacks, and then hitchhiking and walking from his village to the capital to end up knocking on the door of the U.S. embassy to request asylum in the United States. It’s very hard to appreciate all of this if you were born here. But if you want proof that American exceptionalism is a real thing, consider this: in Beijing there are embassies and consulates from more than a hundred fifty nations, but the blind lawyer who had fought for the rights of unborn babies in China didn’t knock on the door of the embassy of Belgium, or Germany, or France, or Russia. He knocked on the front door of our embassy. Why? Because as President Ronald Reagan said, “We are the shining city on the hill,” and that’s what this nation represents to the world. Just go back and read the Declaration of Independence. Read our Constitution. Those words created a political reality that still today, more than two centuries later, causes other humans—who thirst for freedom—to risk their lives to come here. That provides a certain perspective.

  Q: What is your opinion of Bill Kristol and the Never-Trumpers?

  GORKA: Bill Kristol seems to have suffered some kind of psychological breakdown: a man who calls himself a “conservative” and then tells people to vote for Democrats. As he said in one tweet, “In a choice between President Trump and the Deep State, I choose the Deep State.” That’s either somebody who is willingly subversive of a duly elected president or who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is the definition of a Never-Trumper. He and the Never-Trumpers have no right to call themselves “conservatives” anymore. I know that Kristol, a member of the GOP Swamp, has lost his sinecure at the Weekly Standard, which folded, and can’t stand the fact that Donald Trump is president. But that is no excuse for the way he behaved during the 2016 presidential campaign and since. So the Weekly Standard is dead. Good riddance. Bill Kristol, the Never-Trump clique, and their journals are now utterly irrelevant.

  Q. What is the president’s office in Trump Tower like?

  GORKA: The walls are lined with photographs of historic meetings, magazine covers, and other memorabilia of his life. His desk has piles of papers, but no computer, because the president prefers to read print rather than screens and make notations. Then there’s the fabulous view of downtown Manhattan. And it looks very much like the office you would expect Donald Trump to have!

  Q. You’ve expressed your love for science fiction. Which is your favorite Star Wars movie?

  GORKA: That’s a toughie. I love The Empire Strikes Back. It’s the most epic Star Wars movie, and the most dramatic. But I think in terms of changing the history of science fiction entertainment forever, it has to be the original Star Wars (or, as we now call it, Star Wars, A New Hope). George Lucas rehabilitated and revitalized the science fiction genre and redefined the standards for movie blockbusters and special effects. It’s so sad that in the ensuing years he became the corporate entity that he—and his friends at Zoetrope like Francis Ford Coppola—fought against for so long. But, I guess, that can be the price of success.

  Q: What do you think is the biggest threat America faces in the next twenty years?

  GORKA: That’s a fabulous question. When I came into the White House, I had a broad mandate to focus on national security issues and counterterrorism. In fact, Bill O’Reilly called me the president’s “utility infielder on national security.” And once I had the requisite clearances and started reading the classified reports, it became patently obvious to me that we can deal successfully with North Korea; that we can prevent Russia from being the destabilizing factor that it was under Obama; and that we can defeat theocratic Iran and global jihadism just as we defeated the ISIS caliphate.

  The only real strategic threat we face is China. The United States and the West have facilitated this threat for more than forty years. Henry Kissinger’s opening to China in the early 1970s and our support for China’s World Trade Organization membership and “Most Favored Nation” status have made a China an economic competitor that not only wishes to be a military competitor, but to displace us as the world’s leading superpower. This isn’t fiction. This is not classified. Any one of you, my dear readers, can go online and look up the phrase “One Belt, One Road.” It is the Chinese government’s plan to displace America and become a global hegemon by the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 2049. The good news is that President Trump is fully aware of this. After some classified briefings we gave him about what China is doing in America and around the world—in terms of economic espionage and economic warfare, President Trump developed the very resolute China policy that the we have today. Nevertheless, it will be a long struggle.

  Q: Is the age of American supremacy over?

  GORKA: Not at all. It was receding for the eight dark years of the Obama administration, which saw us “leading from behind” and thus withdrawing from international leadership. Our withdrawal created a vacuum in international affairs for others to exploit. We saw that with the rise of ISIS, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China remilitarizing itself. All that changed at noon on January 20, 2017.

  Now you see a reassertion of America as the leading nation in the world. Under President Trump we are coming back. American leadership is back. It will take some time for us to get back to where we should be. But, if you look at the revitalization of NATO, if you look at the destruction of the physical caliphate of ISIS, the stabilizing of the Korean peninsula, American leadership works, and no matter for whom you voted, you have to ask yourself a very simple question: “What other nation would you like to have primacy in the world? Iran? Russia? China?” No other nation was founded on the principles of individual freedom and liberty, and that’s why America should be in pole position always. Otherwise, the world is a very, very dangerous place. Just one data point: during the Obama administration, the number of international refugees climbed to sixty-five million. That is a historic record. Not even in 1945, after six years of global warfare and the redrawing of national borders, did the world see such a refugee crisis. That tells you how dangerous the world is when America recedes from its rightful and correct place as a global actor.

  Q: Two and a half years into the administration, President Trump has not nominated ambassadors to key countries. What does this say about his foreign policy priorities?

  GORKA: Well, in fact, that’s not true. He has nominated ambassadors for all our most important embassies. The issue isn’t nominations, the issue is getting the nominees approved in the face of Democrat intransigence. My favorite example is my good friend Richard Grenell, the highest-ranking openly gay official in the Trump administration, our ambassador to Germany, whose confirmation was blocked for months by Democrat Senator Charles Schumer for no good reason. The Democrats have used every trick in the book to delay almost one hundred key appointments, and to undermine others simply out of spite. The good news is that after the midterm elections in 2018, we are stronger in the Senate, despite having lost the House. So, at least when it comes to approval of nominees, it should be much smoother. But, again, don’t believe everything you read in the Fake News. If you really want to know what’s go
ing on in the Swamp, you need other sources of information, like Fox News and AMERICA First.

  Q: What should America’s Russia policy be?

  GORKA: When people want to understand the president’s Russia policy, I always point them to the last press conference that he gave at Trump Tower before moving into the White House, the one where he handed over his companies to his children. After the press conference had ended, the president-elect was leaving the podium, and a journalist shouted something to the effect of, “What about Russia? What about Putin?” And the president stopped and gave a very succinct response that really says everything you need to know about our Russia policy, then, now, and in the future. He said, and I paraphrase here: “In theory, I would like to have good relations with Russia. Right now, it doesn’t look very likely. And, if that is the case, so be it.”

  Now, think about that for a moment.

  First part: “I would like to have better relations with Russia.” Well, that’s just a sound geopolitical objective. Russia is a nuclear power, with eleven time zones, that sits on the UN security council with veto power. As such, we have to strive for some kind of functioning relationship with Russia, if possible, whoever its president is.

  And as to the second part: “Right now, it doesn’t seem likely.” That is a very apt description of Russia’s relations with America. Russia under Putin is an anti-status quo actor. The Russian government destabilizes parts of the world in order to exploit that destabilization for its own interests—not as a nation, but in the interests of Putin and his siloviki, the Russian military-intelligence clique of former KGB officers and corrupt businessmen who really run Russia for Putin. Whether that destabilization occurs in Europe, with the invasion of Ukraine, or in the Middle East with assets deployed to Syria or elsewhere, the Russian government is not interested in strengthening the international system or normalizing representative democracy and free markets. It is an oligarchy mixed with a kleptocracy, run by a former KGB colonel. So, right now, it doesn’t seem likely that the United States and Russia will have cordial relations.

  Then, Donald Trump closed by saying, “So be it!” That’s President Trump. He’s a pragmatist—an incredibly successful businessman who looks at the world as it is, not as he would like it to be.

  The reverse of that was the last administration when President Obama sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to meet with Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov of the Russian Federation to present him with a mistranslated, cheesy plastic “reset” button, in the hopes of resetting the relations between the two countries—only to have Russia exploit Obama’s naïveté and incompetence by invading Ukraine.

  Our policy now is that it would be good to have better relations with Russia, but since Russia is not interested, so be it. With our actions in Syria, our deployment of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, the president’s plan to deploy more U.S. troops to Poland, the initiation of stringent sanctions against the Russian regime and more,3 the Trump administration has been tougher on Moscow than any administration since Ronald Reagan’s.

  Q: Do you stand with President Trump or Pope Francis on the morality of a border wall between the United States and Mexico?

  GORKA: I’m a Catholic, so I recognize pontifical authority, but I would also like to inject some factual context. The Vatican is a walled city. It has a massive wall around it. The idea that walls by themselves are immoral is plainly absurd. People lock their door at night; nations have borders; civilized communities, since the most ancient of times, have built walls. Why? Because you wish to protect that which is inside. You close your front door and lock it at night, not because you hate everybody outside, but because you love that which is inside your home, and you wish to protect it. Our borders are the doors into our country. And the idea that you do not police who comes into your home, or your nation, is suicidal.

  Here is something that should make all people—all Americans, liberals included—want to support the president and his building of the wall: I am a legal immigrant to the United States of America. The first lady is a legal immigrant to the United States. Legal immigration is fine. But it is terribly immoral to encourage illegal immigrants to put their lives and their children’s lives into the hands of human traffickers who take their orders from drug cartels, rape women, and don’t care if the immigrants die after they have paid for their passage.

  And then there is the domestic economic aspect. Every illegal alien who comes across the border, who is prepared to work illegally for cash, undermines the capacity of working-class Americans—including working-class immigrants who have come here lawfully—to provide for themselves and their families.

  So, whether you’re Pope Francis or Nancy Pelosi, if you really care about immigrants and the poor, then you should support the building of a border wall and the enforcement of our border laws. National sovereignty is a good thing. Without national sovereignty you don’t have a nation. That is the underlying philosophy of Donald Trump’s trade and international policies, and it is grounded in a very defensible morality.

  Q: What is your take on Mohammed Bin Salman, the man who is effectively running Saudi Arabia; is he good, bad, or crazy?

  GORKA: I don’t know if he’s crazy. I’m not a mental health professional. Is he good or bad? When I was in the White House, we worked very, very diligently to try and change Saudi Arabia’s behavior when it came to the sponsorship of bad actors and the propagation of jihadi ideology across the world. For far too many decades, members of the royal family and the ruling elite were on the wrong side of the war against global jihadism, and if you want to be an ally of America, or if you want to be a partner, that attitude cannot be maintained.

  We made it clear to Riyadh, and to Mohammad Bin Salman, that they had to undertake what in the White House we called, “behavior modification.” And, they did. In May 2017 President Trump gave a speech at the American Islamic Arab Summit in Riyadh.4 Speaking to the fifty-two Muslim and Arab heads of state sitting in front of him, he called on the Muslim leaders to rid their countries and houses of worship of terrorists and radicals. Within two weeks of that speech, the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council—Saudi Arabia included—announced they were boycotting and terminating diplomatic relations with Qatar, which was one of the worst perpetrators of financing jihadism around the world. That is behavior modification.

  Since that time, Mohammad Bin Salman has initiated other reforms in Saudi Arabia, but it has been a rocky road, especially after the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi—a murder that has been indecently exploited by the press as yet another means to attack President Trump for his diplomatic efforts with the Kingdom. Of course, Khashoggi didn’t deserve to be murdered, but the press has made him out to be a liberal martyr, which is not true. The idea that an admitted member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a close associate of Osama Bin Laden, and an advocate for Islamist theocracy, all of which Khashoggi was, is somehow a freedom fighter for democracy tells you everything you need to know about the moral and professional bankruptcy of today’s media.

  Q: Would you have authorized the air strikes in Syria after the Syrian regime gassed its own citizens?

  GORKA: Absolutely. I can’t go into details, but I saw the intelligence at the time. The President took action to send a very clear message, not just to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, but to Assad’s sponsors, and to other bad actors around the world, that America will act against those who think they can use forbidden weapons of war against unarmed women and children. So, yes, absolutely, I’d have had no problem in launching cruise missiles against Assad as the president did.

  Q: What is the threat of Islamic fundamentalism to the United States and the world community now and in the future?

  GORKA: It remains. ISIS’s physical caliphate has been destroyed thanks to the leadership and policy decisions of President Trump. But ISIS itself, as an organization, has not been destroyed; it has moved into other areas. It has even established facilities in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is not de
ad either. Al Qaeda is still active, especially in Africa and southern Asia.

  Right now the threat is contained. The key metric for how effectively it will remain contained will be a function of how well we help our Muslim partners—especially Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—and regional powers like Israel, to deal with the threat. Right now, the president has reshaped the geostrategic reality in the Middle East in ways that make a lasting containment possible—from destroying the ISIS caliphate, to dramatically improving relations with Israel, to seeking realistic diplomatic solutions with the Arab world—and that will continue for as long as Donald Trump is president.

  Q: Aside from Islamic fundamentalism what, in your opinion, is America’s greatest, non-state actor threat?

  GORKA: I don’t believe that any non-state actor poses a threat the way China does. I also don’t subscribe to the theory that the most serious sub-state or non-state actor threat comes from hackers in the cyber domain, as many do. For a cyber threat to be significant to America, it really has to be of a nation-state-sponsored variety, such as China and Russia. Hackers can do damage to an individual or an organization, but not at a strategic level. Unless you are a state actor, you cannot wage war using cyber tools. So, not cyber.

  Really, it’s criminal cartels, it’s transnational organized crime. If you look at what’s happening on the southern border, if you look at what’s happening in Mexico where tens of thousands of people have been killed in recent years, if you look at the tragedy of human-trafficking, it is the drug cartels that are the top non-state actor threat after the global jihadi movement.

  Q: We have seen liberal media bias for years; do you think that will ever improve?

  GORKA: I’m often asked about media bias, and my dispassionate response is, “Describe to me the scenarios under which it would improve.” There are two likely options. Number one, the so-called mainstream media have some kind of epiphany: they look in the mirror one day and decide that they’re going to be fair, to suddenly become apolitical. But why would they do that?