Kerby Anderson

Although I rarely write about who is leaving a government post, I wanted to make an exception with the departure of Sebastian Gorka. He served as a deputy assistant to President Trump and left the White House in late August. I wanted to talk about him first because he seems to understand the threat of radical Islam much better than many people who write about it or work in the government. That was evident in his book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War. It was even more obvious when I was able to interview him before he served in the administration. Second, I wanted to talk about him because of what he wrote in his resignation letter. He expressed some doubt as to whether the president’s agenda could be achieved. “Regrettably, outside of yourself, the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again,’ have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months.” He said that because of what he noticed was NOT in the president’s speech on Afghanistan. “The fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost.” He even went on to mention that the speech failed to define the strategic victory conditions we are fighting for. His comments reminded me of what Tucker Carlson said on his program the other day when Steve Bannon stepped down. Carlson said that Bannon was one of the few people in the Trump White House who wouldn’t feel comfortable working in Hillary Clinton’s White House. If these two comments are true, then it seems less likely that the Trump agenda will move forward in the future. Citizens who voted for Donald Trump, either eagerly or even reluctantly, expected that he and his administration would shake things up in Washington. That may not be the case.