53 Facts About Sebastian Gorka

Sebastian Lukacs Gorka is a British-Hungarian-American media host and commentator, currently affiliated with Salem Radio Network and NewsMax TV, and a United States government official.

Sebastian Gorka served in the first Trump administration as a deputy assistant to the president for seven months, from January until August 2017.

Sebastian Gorka has written several books and for a variety of publications, is politically conservative and has ties to the alt-right, though he rejects the term and has condemned the alt-right, calling it "bogus" and "a new label for nationalists or irredentist bigots".

Sebastian Gorka was born in London to Zsuzsa and Pal Sebastian Gorka on October 22,1970.

Sebastian Gorka's parents had fled to the United Kingdom from Hungary after the failed anti-Soviet 1956 uprising and became naturalised British citizens on February 25,1963.

In 1992, Sebastian Gorka moved to Hungary, where he worked for the Hungarian Ministry of Defence while studying for a master's degree in international relations and diplomacy at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration, now known as the Corvinus University, which he completed in 1997.

In 1998, Sebastian Gorka served as an adviser to Viktor Orban.

Sebastian Gorka worked in the Hungarian Ministry of Defense during the prime ministership of Jozsef Antall.

Sebastian Gorka failed to obtain the necessary security clearance from the National Security Office to serve on the committee, apparently because he was widely regarded as a spy working for British counterintelligence.

Sebastian Gorka defended himself against the charge by saying his service in the British army was merely as a uniformed member of its counterterrorism unit, tasked with assessing threats from groups such as the IRA.

In 2004, Gorka became an adjunct to the faculty of the new US initiative for the Program for Terrorism and Security Studies, a Defense Department-funded program based in the George C Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

Sebastian Gorka was hired as administrative dean at the National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington DC Two years later, he began to lecture part-time for the ASD-funded Masters Program in Irregular Warfare and Counterterrorism as part of the Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program but remained in a largely administrative role.

Between 2009 and 2011 Sebastian Gorka wrote for the Hudson Institute of New York.

Between 2011 and 2013, Sebastian Gorka was an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy.

In 2014 Gorka assumed the privately endowed Major General Matthew C Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University Foundation.

From 2014 to 2016, Sebastian Gorka was an editor for national security affairs for Breitbart News, where he worked for Steve Bannon.

Sebastian Gorka is on the advisory board of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs.

In January 2017, Sebastian Gorka was appointed Deputy Assistant to the President and Strategist in the Trump White House.

Sebastian Gorka was a member of a White House team known as the Strategic Initiatives Group, which was set up by White House advisors Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.

The Strategic Initiatives Group never got off the ground, and Sebastian Gorka failed to obtain the security clearance necessary for work on national security issues.

Shortly after taking a position in the Trump administration in early 2017, Sebastian Gorka drew criticism from multiple commentators in academia and politics, who characterized him as a fringe figure in academic and policy-making circles.

Sebastian Gorka has never published any scholarship of significance and his views on Islam and US national security are extreme even by Washington standards.

Sebastian Gorka stated that he had resigned because White House officials were "undermining" the Make America Great Again Platform.

Sebastian Gorka was a Fox News contributor from 2017 to 2019.

On March 3,2019 Mediaite reported that Fox News had confirmed that Sebastian Gorka was no longer affiliated with the network.

On January 1,2019, he began hosting America First with Sebastian Gorka, replacing Michael Medved on Salem Radio from 3 to 6pm Eastern Time.

In September 2019, Sebastian Gorka became a spokesman for Relief Factor, a fish oil supplement.

In 2021, Sebastian Gorka began hosting a weekend program called The Sebastian Gorka Reality Check on NewsMax TV.

In November 2024, Sebastian Gorka was named to become deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism in the second Trump administration.

Sebastian Gorka has been described as conservative but others described him as being far-right.

Sebastian Gorka has ties to the alt-right, though he rejects the term and has condemned the alt-right, calling it "bogus" and "a new label for nationalists or irredentist bigots".

Statements of support for Sebastian Gorka, which have challenged the description of him as an antisemite, all predated a 2017 story that connected him with another extreme far-right anti-Semitic group.

Sebastian Gorka's views have been described as Islamophobic by scholars, journalists, and US officials, and he has been considered a part of the counter-jihad movement.

Sebastian Gorka sees Islamic terrorism as essentially ideologically motivated and rooted in a totalitarian religious mindset.

Sebastian Gorka believes that the jihadi threat is an ideological one that has to be addressed in manners similar to past totalitarian ideologies of the Cold War.

Sebastian Gorka has adopted the title in this way in a number of his publications, notably his PhD thesis and his writings for the Gatestone Institute.

Sebastian Gorka used the title in his June 2011 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.

In 2017, Sebastian Gorka appeared on Fox News on the evening of the US presidential inauguration wearing a badge, tunic, and ring of the Order of Vitez.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman wrote in April 2017 that Sebastian Gorka "has been accused of having links to far-right groups in Europe", and The Guardian reported that the Order of Vitez, whose medal Sebastian Gorka wore to Donald Trump's inaugural ball, "has been linked by some to Nazi colluders".

Sebastian Gorka himself stated that he wears this medal in remembrance of his father, who was awarded the decoration for his efforts to create an anti-communist, pro-democracy organization at the university he attended in Hungary.

Robert Kerepeszki, a Hungarian expert on the Order of Vitez, has confirmed that there were ruptures in the organization of the Order of Vitez on the question of Nazism during the war, many of them died fighting against Hungarian Nazi sympathizers, and Sebastian Gorka's medal had nothing to do with the war period, but was awarded "for his resistance to dictatorship".

The tunic that Sebastian Gorka wore was just a traditional Hungarian jacket, known as a bocskai.

People who have worked with Sebastian Gorka have said that he is not antisemitic.

On March 16,2017, leaders of one of two successor organisations of the Vitezi Rend stated that Sebastian Gorka was an official member of the Historical Vitezi Rend faction, to which he is said to have taken a lifelong oath of loyalty.

The Anti-Defamation League has asked Sebastian Gorka to disavow the Hungarian National Committee and the New Democratic Coalition.

On March 17,2017, Sebastian Gorka issued a statement in which he denied that he was a sworn member of Hungarian groups with Nazi past.

Sebastian Gorka married Pennsylvania native Katharine Fairfax Cornell on July 6,1996, in St Michael's Roman Catholic Church, Sopron, Hungary.

Katharine Sebastian Gorka has been involved with the administration of Donald Trump, first serving on his transition team for the Department of Homeland Security.

Sebastian Gorka then became a policy advisor at DHS on April 7,2017.

Sebastian Gorka was detained on January 31,2016, at the Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington DC for attempting to board a plane with a 9 mm handgun in his luggage.

The gun was confiscated by Transportation Security Administration officers and Sebastian Gorka, after being detained and issued with a criminal summons, was permitted to board the plane.

Sebastian Gorka said that he had packed the carry-on bag without remembering that it contained a gun.

Sebastian Gorka called the report fallacious, and told Newsweek he was contacting Hungarian authorities for clarification.