Is The Other White House Neo-Nazi, Stephen Miller, Laying Low 'Til It All Blows Over?

Feelin' isolated... by Nancy Ohanian

As Señor Trumpanzee ran around frantically trying to claim credit for something to do with Hurricane Harvey-- instead of blame for denying the climate change that made it catastrophic-- his support on the fringe right kept eroding. Monday, Politico reported how dangerous far right lunatic was whining at the National Review that the adults surrounding Trump don't let Bolton anywhere near him anymore. Bolton claimed that "that although former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon had asked him to draw up a plan to extricate the United States from the Iran deal in late July, that plan never made it to Trump’s desk after Bannon was fired earlier this month."

And Bolton isn't the only neo-Nazi type being kept away from the impressionable and senile occupant of the Oval Office. In fact, actual Nazi, Sebastian Gorka-- unceremoniously fired and barred from the White House grounds-- told The Hill that he blames Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and frets that Trumpanzee is feeling "isolated." In his interview, the vengeful Gorka said Ryan and McConnell are living in a "fantasy illusion that Nov. 8 was their victory as much as it was the president's" and that their "credibility is lost and unrecoverable... I don't think [Ryan and McConnell] are working against [Trump], but they're definitely not working with him." He threatened that "they will pay a penalty for that mistake and belief."

Gorka said Trump feels more isolated at the White House, and suggested he does not like all of the changes instituted by new chief of staff John Kelly, who has restricted access to the president as a means of bringing more discipline to the Oval Office.

“The president currently feels, to a certain extent, isolated,” Gorka said. “Individuals don't have access to him as they did in the past.

“So we know [Chief of Staff] General Kelly wanted to impose a certain regimen on the system,” he said. “But there are aspects of the new regime that the president is not satisfied with, let me leave it at that.”

Gorka said the key to Kelly's success in his new role will ultimately come down to chemistry and a “commitment to the president's vision.”

“He's definitely asserted control as one would expect from a military professional,” says Gorka. “The key unknown is whether his style will comport with the president's expectations and own style.

“Look at White House history. Being an effective chief of staff is never just about efficiency. It's far more about chemistry and commitment to the president's vision.”

Though Gorka insists he resigned, the White House has disputed that characterization in a statement that explicitly said he had not resigned. Many see Kelly as having pushed out Gorka, who worked as a deputy assistant to Trump on national security issues.

Gorka said Bannon’s exit was a reason for his own departure. He insisted the final straw, however, was a speech the president gave on the administration’s new Afghanistan policy that didn't include the words “radical Islam.”

Gorka, in a series of interviews, has said many in the White House are working against Trump and do not believe in his “Make America Great Again” agenda.

“There are individuals who don’t agree with the original agenda that we campaigned for,” Gorka said. “And as such, I can't support that dilution of the original mission. But I can do a lot more on the outside to make sure the president’s original vision is implemented.”

Above is an actual ad Republicans are running in rural areas of several states to rile up their base-- although our art director swapped out the photograph of the perfect little Aryan family they used-- looks like it came right out a Deutschland über Alles propaganda piece, for one that better represents the actual Trumpist base in all its glory. And below... well please watch the short MSNBC segment all the way to the end or you'll miss Chris Hayes' best impression ever:

The Well Oiled Machine Is In An Uproar Again-- Was Gorka Fired Or Did He Quit?

Friday night conflicting reports started circulating about Trump's pet White House Nazi, Sebastian Gorka. He was fired. No, he quit. So which is it? The Hill reported that on White House official told them that "Sebastian Gorka did not resign, but I can confirm he no longer works at the White House." That sure sounds like fired-- and like national security adviser H.R. McMaster and chief of staff John Kelly got rid of an ugly remnant of Bannonism still lurking around the White House. The NY Times referred to Gorka's departure in terms of him being "forced out" by Kelly. Gorka tells a different story. A crackpot right-wing website told his version Friday night as well, right down to referring to the bombastic TV Nasi as a "national security and counterterrorism expert," which he never was.

In a blunt resignation letter, the national security and counterterrorism expert expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of the Trump administration. “[G]iven recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are-- for now-- ascendant within the White House,” Gorka wrote. “As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”

Gorka’s letter expressed unhappiness with the direction the Trump administration’s foreign policy has taken, as signaled by the president’s recent speech on Afghanistan:

“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. This was made patently obvious as I read the text of your speech on Afghanistan this week…

“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…

“Just as worrying, when discussing our future actions in the region, the speech listed operational objectives without ever defining the strategic victory conditions we are fighting for. This omission should seriously disturb any national security professional, and any American who is unsatisfied with the last 16 years of disastrous policy decisions which have led to thousands of Americans killed and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent in ways that have not brought security or victory.”

That leaves Stephen Miller.

Putin-Gate... Drip, Drip, Drip

Julian Borger reported in yesterday's Guardian that way back in December, after Putin was already celebrating his victories in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Florida that the British government had already been given the details of how Trump's campaign had been colluding with the Kremlin on stealing the election.

This became part of the explosive dossier by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. The news in Britain wasn't that that the UK intelligence services had also received the dossier but that Steele confirmed in a court filing earlier this month that he handed a memorandum compiled in December to a 'senior UK government national security official acting in his official capacity, on a confidential basis in hard copy form.'" Steele's testimony emphasized that he had decided to pass on the information he had collected because it was "of considerable importance in relation to alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election," that it "had implications for the national security of the US and the UK" and "needed to [be] analysed and further investigated/verified."

The December memo alleged that four Trump representatives travelled to Prague in August or September in 2016 for “secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers,” about how to pay hackers secretly for penetrating Democratic party computer systems and “contingency plans for covering up operations.”

Between March and September, the December memo alleges, the hackers used botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs and steal data online from Democratic party leadership. Two of the hackers had been “recruited under duress by the FSB” the memo said. The hackers were paid by the Trump organisation, but were under the control of Vladimir Putin’s presidential administration.

Trump has rejected the allegations of collusion as a smear campaign. His lawyer, Michael Cohen, one of Trump representatives named in the memo, has described the claims in the memo as “totally fake, totally inaccurate,” and has said he had never been to Prague.

Since the memo became public in January, Steele had not spoken about his role in compiling it but he and his company, Orbis Business Intelligence Limited, have filed a defence in the high court of justice in London, in a defamation case brought by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian venture capitalist and owner of a global computer technology company, XBT, and a Dallas-based subsidiary Webzilla.

Gubarev, who was named along with his company in the December memo as being involved in hacking operation, has denied any such involvement and is also suing Buzzfeed in the US courts for publishing the December memo alongside Steele’s earlier reports on election hacking.

A statement by Steele’s defence lawyers, endorsed by the former MI6 agent, said Orbis was hired between June and November last year by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research consultancy to look into Trump’s links with Russia.

In that period, Steele produced 16 memoranda citing mostly Russian sources as describing a web of alleged contacts and collusion between Trump aides and Russian intelligence or other Kremlin representatives.

The document said that he passed the memos to Fusion on the understanding that Fusion would not disclose the material to any third parties without the approval of Steele and Orbis. They did agree to Fusion providing a copy to Senator John McCain after the veteran Republican had been told about the existence of Steele’s research by Sir Andrew Wood, a former UK ambassador to Moscow and an Orbis associate, at a conference in Canada on 8 November.

Senator McCain handed a copy of the Steele memos to James Comey, the FBI director, on 9 December.

After delivering these reports, the court papers say Steele and Orbis continued to receive “unsolicited intelligence” on Trump-Russia links, and Steele decided that to draw up another memo with this new information which was dated 13 December.

He handed one copy over to the senior British national security official and sent an encrypted version to Fusion with instructions to deliver a hard copy to Senator McCain.

The essence of this isn't new. Back in February, CNN was reporting that according to the FBI, Trump's closest confidants-- although no one was mentioning Kushner-in-law back then-- "were in constant communication during the campaign with Russians known to US intelligence." And President-elect Trumpanzee was briefed by intelligence agencies on what was happening in his own campaign. Two cases most mentioned back then were campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy advisor Michael Flynn.

Trump dismissed the claims that his advisers had close ties to Russia in a tweet Wednesday.

"This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton's losing campaign," Trump tweeted.

CNN has reached out to Flynn for comment. In an interview, Manafort emphatically denied that he was in contact with Russians known to US intelligence.

"That is 100% not true, at least as far as me," he said. "I cannot believe that they are including me in anything like that. I have not been involved in any of these activities."

Manafort said he did not know where US officials got the idea that he was in contact with suspected Russian operatives during the campaign but said he never spoke with any Russian officials during that time.

"I don't remember talking to any Russian officials, ever. Certainly during the time we're talking about," he said, calling the allegations "boggling."

"I have knowingly never talked to any intelligence official or anyone in Russia regarding anything of what's under investigation," he said. "I have never had any connection to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin or the Russian government before, during or after the campaign."

Manafort said the FBI has not contacted him about the allegations and said he was not aware of any other Trump campaign officials or people close to Trump being in touch with Russians known to US intelligence.

Manafort, who has held business ties with Russian and Ukrainian individuals, also emphasized that his work for the Yanukovich government in Ukraine should not be interpreted as closeness to the Russians. He said he worked for Yanukovich during a time when Ukraine was "moving into the European orbit."

The extensive contacts drew concerns of US intelligence and law enforcement officials in part because it came at a time of Russian cyberactivities targeting mostly Democratic Party political organizations.

Post-election intelligence briefings on Russian meddling in the US elections included details of those communications, which included people involved in Trump's businesses.

The communications were gathered as part of routine US intelligence collection and not because people close to Trump were being targeted.

The FBI and US intelligence agencies continue to try to determine what the motive for the communications were.

One concern was whether Trump associates were coordinating with Russian intelligence operatives over the release of damaging information about the Hillary Clinton campaign.

"If that were the case, then that would escalate things," one official briefed on the investigation said.

Well... that's certainly happened in the last couple of months, hasn't it? But now the Putin-Gate scandal is seeping all over the GOP, including onto members of Congress. Nunes' career is finished. Issa, Rohrabacher and Ryan are tainted. Burr will probably have to retire in 2022. And the latest to feel the taint is the GOP candidate in the special election in Montana, crooked multimillionaire Greg Gianforte who has invested almost a quarter million dollars in in shares in two index funds that invest in the Russian economy, including in firms that have been sanctioned by the Treasury Department, like Kremlin-controlled Gazprom and Rosneft.

Devin & Sebastian

And it now looks like National Security advisor H.R. McMaster and Kushner-in-law have finally persuaded Trumpanzee to jettison neo-Nazi sociopath Sebastian Gorka, who Trumpanzee admires as a TV personality but who is widely viewed as a risk to national security and a risk to Trump politically. On Friday the DailyBeast reported that the Regime is trying to figure out how to dump him without causing any problems for itself among its neo-Nazi base. Singapore is already taken. McMaster has excluded him from any and all participation in anything to do with national security and is eager to see him move into a job that doesn't require any security clearance or any access to sensitive materials. "Gorka’s looming departure from the White House," they report, "which one of the sources described as imminent, comes amid mounting controversy over his involvement with a far-right Hungarian group notorious for its collaboration with the Nazi regime during the second world war... Two senior administration officials described Gorka as completely devoid of influence on White House policy, corroborating reports that he 'had not been cleared to sit in any sort of national security meetings, which leaves him without much to do all day,' as one former Obama administration official told BuzzFeed."

Why Conservative Curmudgeon Richard Lugar Isn't Having Any Of Trump's Foreign Policy Bullshit

With his domestic agenda in tatters and his approval ratings circling the drain, Trumpy-the-Clown has decided to trying out his new super-powers in the foreign affairs realm. Plenty of reason for everyone to be plenty nervous about that. But Richard Lugar, a Republican former senator from Indiana spoke at the Foreign Policy Association Tuesday on conflict prevention and couldn't find much in Trump's approach to be sanguine about. He began with a warning about there'll threat we're facing as a country (and a planet): "Under normal circumstances, I might address such topics as the Middle East peace process, the need to secure weapons of mass destruction, the fate of the Iran nuclear agreement, or relations with Russia and China. But at the beginning of a new Presidential administration in Washington, we face an even more fundamental dilemma for conflict prevention. This is whether the United States will continue to provide comprehensive leadership in a dangerous world. Since World War II, the most essential factor in preventing conflict has been U.S. leadership. We may have made some mistakes during that time, but the overarching effect of America’s commitment to global order has been the growth of international norms and institutions that have checked conflict, promoted human rights, and expanded stability. We see this most clearly in Europe, a continent wracked by deadly conflict for centuries. With the benefit of a U.S.-led alliance and security guarantees, Europe has maintained peace in most corners of the continent for the last 70 years. For decades, both Democrat and Republican presidents have embraced American global leadership. It is early in the Trump presidency.  But the President and many of his aides have been outspoken in their skepticism or even disdain for continuing America’s global role. It is my contention today that if strong and comprehensive American leadership is withdrawn from the global stage, broader efforts at conflict prevention will fail. The people of the United States and most countries of the world will become poorer and will have to endure more frequent conflict. Solutions to threats that impact us all, including climate change, extreme poverty and hunger, communicable diseases, nuclear proliferation, cyberwarfare, and terrorism will be almost impossible to solve."

His description of Trump sounded like his description of a new puppy that hasn't been house-broken yet. "I am sure that President Trump wants to succeed and that he is learning on the job how our government functions, what powers the President can and cannot exercise, and how he can interact with the rest of the U.S. government. He is also having his first experiences with international politics." But Lugar said he's more worried about the Regime's "deliberate foreign policy choices" than about Trump's bungling first misteps.

The Trump Administration has criticized “globalism” and stated its intent to downsize American involvement and leadership in the world. This intent is reflected in the President’s proposed budget. One of the ironies of this is that a President who campaigned on his ability to achieve grandiose results is offering a vision that is so lacking in ambition and so devoid of American heroism. So far, Trump foreign policy has been an outgrowth of the 2016 Trump political campaign, rather than a sober assessment of global conditions and U.S. interests.

We elect Administrations, not just to execute policies that have political momentum. We also expect them to construct a strategic vision that attempts to integrate all levers of American power. We expect them to play geopolitical offense, not just hunker down in a defensive posture.

Many of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy goals are simplistic, prosaic, and reactive. These include building a wall to seal our southern border, extracting more contributions from fellow alliance members, seeking concessions from longstanding trade partners, ejecting as many undocumented immigrants as possible, and cutting the State Department budget by almost a third. Taken together, these policies do nothing to enhance American productivity or competitiveness at home or influence overseas. These are goals that normally would be associated with a selfish, inward looking nation that is being motivated by fear, not a great superpower with the capacity to shape global affairs.

What the President will learn in time is that geopolitical power is not primarily about deal-making or even decision-making. It has much more to do with building and maintaining leverage that can be brought to bear both in times of crisis and in the normal course of international operations. American leverage comes from numerous sources, not just military power. It comes from strong alliances and trade relationships. It comes from global leadership within international institutions. It comes from robust diplomatic capabilities. And it comes from the respect and confidence that other governments and peoples have in the historic leadership role of the United States.

President Trump has experimented with military power, especially in the recent strike against Syrian targets. This action reversed pronouncements he made as a candidate that military involvement in Syria would be a mistake. His budget also proposed large increases in military spending, even as other national security accounts were targeted for cuts. It is too early to fully judge the military policies of the Administration or the efficacy of its military actions in Syria. But the President must understand that military power cannot substitute for other forms of leverage. The events of this century should make it abundantly clear that the military instrument-- though essential-- is difficult to use. Military force can be incredibly expensive in lives and treasure and often is accompanied by moral dilemmas. It almost always elicits a response from enemies, sometimes through disproportionate warfare. A strong, well-funded military remains as important as ever in deterring aggression and addressing threats that cannot be solved in any other way. But we cannot bomb our way to security.

Unfortunately the first three months of the Trump Presidency have been an exercise in squandering America’s international leverage in favor of campaign-driven foreign policy themes that are fundamentally contradicted by centuries of world history. The President is choosing to wager American prosperity and security on the discredited panaceas that industry growth can be ignited by greater protections from global trade, that American jobs can be preserved by building a border wall and deporting immigrants, and that American security can best be protected by downsizing the U.S. role in the world. The President has rightly worried about how we compete with China, for example. But he has blithely rejected our most potent leverage in that competition-- the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty.

In each of these areas-- trade, immigration, and alliances-- the common theme voiced by the Administration is that our country has been exploited by malevolent foreign forces and complicit American leaders. This has a strong appeal to some Americans who feel displaced by global competition or threatened by immigrants. But over time, the net effect of actually following through on all of this would be an economic and geopolitical disaster.

In the contemporary context, global trade is unsettling to many Americans. But trade is essential to any economy. It expands choices for consumers, holds down inflation, gives businesses the widest possible markets, stimulates innovation, and promotes economic growth.

We know that the most powerful force in the dislocation of American manufacturing is automation and the advancement of technology, especially information technology. These efficiencies have made our workers far more productive than they were at the beginning of this century. When industries produce more with less labor, workers lose jobs. The main challenge in responding to these economic dislocations is improving the business environment and finding ways to retrain workers and connect them to new jobs, often in different locations. This is a hard process, but it is not impossible. We doom our nation’s workforce to a dismal future if we shift the blame to trade and immigrants, instead of attacking the real challenge. We also know that attempting to isolate a nation from trade competition is a self-defeating strategy that will hurt those at the bottom of the economic ladder before anyone else.

On immigration, we are mired in a debate of distraction. The issue is not whether our nation could expand resources and embrace efficiencies that might improve border security. That is a reasonable goal that might be achieved in a number of ways. The problem is that the methods selected by the Trump Administration have been designed for ostentatious symbolism rather than for maximizing U.S. security. Building a border wall and issuing an executive order to ban entrants from certain Muslim countries waste both American resources and international good will. This is not to say that some malefactors might not be prevented from entering the country by a wall or a ban. But there are more cost-efficient and effective ways of going about this work that would not alienate global public opinion, poison good relations with Mexico, and hand a recruitment tool to terrorists.

In a world where dampening the rise of new terrorists is as important as dealing with existing ones, the ban on entrants from Muslim countries represents the most obvious recruitment tool against the United States since Abu Ghraib. We know the commitment of the American people and the strength of our Constitution in protecting freedom of religion. But a ban of this type, especially accompanied by the Trump campaign’s history of anti-Islamic rhetoric, gives verbal ammunition to any terrorist leader who seeks to focus followers on the United States. It also makes it more difficult to recruit allies, translators, sources of human intelligence, and other help that we need in Muslim countries around the globe. The ban has been a steep net loss to U.S. national security. Carrying out such a policy indicates either that the Administration has subordinated U.S. security to domestic political considerations or it has an extremely unsophisticated understanding of the power of international propaganda.

The cause of improving border enforcement is rational. But focusing these efforts so heavily on a wall, while proposing large cuts in the Coast Guard and State Department budgets bespeaks a similar misunderstanding of relative risk.   Advisors have failed to make clear to the President that the State Department and the Coast Guard are among the most important agencies in combating the entry of terrorists and drugs into the United States. That is a rather fundamental point to miss in such an important debate. But, of course, neither of those agencies has the symbolic lure of a massive construction project on our southern border.

Regrettably, the sound and fury over immigration symbolism neglects a reasoned debate on immigration that might generate a consensus political solution. As I have observed in the past, immigration is an issue that is conducive to a workable compromise that strengthens enforcement, improves our relationship with Mexico, ensures access to job-creating high-skilled labor, captures more taxes, and deals humanely with millions of undocumented immigrants. The details of an immigration compromise are well understood. This is a political problem, not a technical one.

Finally, as with immigration and trade, the Trump Administration’s early policies toward allies threaten to shed leverage that we will need to address crises in the future. It is fair for the President to seek greater contributions from our alliance partners. All recent Presidents have done that. But the Administration has to recognize that it cannot allow any doubts in the minds of our adversaries about U.S. commitment to our allies. Such ambiguity is not clever. It is dangerous and can lead to deadly miscalculation.

This is especially true in Eastern Europe where we have witnessed recent examples of Russian aggression near the NATO alliance. Our government should make very clear that the United States will honor our NATO Article V commitments under all circumstances. The positions of the United States of America and the statements of the President are a vital part of the baseline of global order.

Any nation, including the United States, must pursue its self-interest.  Nations, at their core, are not altruistic enterprises. They exist to promote the security and prosperity of their citizens. The irony is that the nations that succeed the most at self-interested goals have always been the ones that respect broader ideals of human freedom, justice for the individual, and rule of law. Those nations that do not aspire to a higher ideal lose their claim to greatness. The United States of America has been a powerful nation. But more importantly, it has been a heroic nation.

Our greatest moments-- the moments that have defined national character and propelled our society forward-- have been those when we have sacrificed something for more than just self-interest. The most compelling examples of heroism by American leaders have several important things in common. They have been directed outward, rejecting self-aggrandizement. They have looked to the future, as opposed to attempting to recapture the past. They have been absent bravado, declining to press advantages that they might have taken. And frequently, they have been self-sacrificial.

We think of George Washington carefully setting precedent after precedent that would assure that the power of the Presidency was constrained. We think of Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox foregoing the vengeance of a victor and Robert E. Lee, the rebel, rejecting the option of guerrilla war and urging his soldiers to go home and be good citizens. We think of Abraham Lincoln at the Second inaugural, urging reconciliation, when many advisors wanted retribution. We think of Franklin Roosevelt embracing the global burden of defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We think of Dwight Eisenhower’s painstaking efforts to hold the Western alliance together to win the war in Europe and set the stage for the post-World War II order. We think of generations of leaders who sacrificed body and mind in the struggle for civil rights from Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and many, like John Lewis, who are still working today. We think of thousands of risk takers in science and industry from John Glenn and Neil Armstrong to Jonas Salk and Norman Borlaug who pioneered amazing discoveries that expanded human knowledge or saved millions of lives.

Our country, too, has been heroic. More than any other nation, the United States possesses a traditional moral identity. That identity is closely associated with religious tolerance, democratic governance, freedom of the individual, the promotion of economic opportunity, and resistance to oppression. This set of ideals was espoused in our founding documents and reaffirmed through the sacrifices of our own Civil War. It was amplified during two World Wars in which the United States opposed the forces of aggression and conquest. And it was reinvigorated through the struggle of our civil rights movement.

The United States has been and still is a force for good in the world. I believe this is indisputable from any objective point of view.  In most respects, we have been an incredibly generous nation. We have helped to rehabilitate enemies like Germany and Japan, and we initiated co-operative threat reduction to help the former Soviet Union protect and destroy the very nuclear arsenal that was once pointed at us. We have helped countries such as South Korea move from extreme poverty to impressive prosperity through our assistance and protection. Americans lead the world’s fight against AIDS and hunger. The United States is also the undisputed leader in disaster assistance.

Our armed forces, by their mere presence, have deterred major wars and minor conflicts. Our Navy has been the principal force for maintaining order on the high seas. Our democratic institutions and political and social freedoms have been models for the world, and we have actively helped to nurture democracy in numerous nations. Many Americans do not fully appreciate the international impact of the example set by our transparent political debate and the extraordinary degree of self-examination that accompanies American policy decisions.

I would contend that our leverage in global affairs, and therefore our own security, is intimately connected to this heroic tradition. But it has to be maintained. Once it is gone, it is very difficult to retrieve. Other power structures will occupy the void, and many of them are not sympathetic to American values and interests. We are already seeing clear actions by China, for example, to enhance its trade and foreign assistance relationships in Asia as neighboring countries deal with doubts about the Trump Administration’s willingness to stay fully involved in the region. China also is attempting to position itself as a leader on climate change to take advantage of a declining American role.

I remain optimistic about our country’s future as a global leader. Our institutions are very strong and grounded in a resilient Constitution. I believe that that the American people are proud of the historic leadership role of our country and recognize that it is indivisible from our own security. All of us must continue to make these points in public debate and continue to have confidence that the coming century will be one of American heroism and achievement.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Trumpanzee's first 3 chaotic months. Virtually everyone I know wishes Trump wasn't president, but I don't know many people who long for a Hillary Clinton presidency. Except Richard Lugar. and this kind of report in the media, just makes the whole dysfunctional Trump Regime even more difficult to contend with. This is important:

Let's Revisit A Serious Personnel Problem Señor Trumpanzee Has Inside The White House: A Real Live Nazi

It's impossible to say authoritatively which of Trump's advisors and co-conspirators is the very worst. Together they compose an America kakistocracy-- a word coined in 1829 by English novelist Thomas Love Peacock in his book The Misfortunes of Elphin, defined as "government by the worst, most unscrupulous, or least qualified citizens." That certainly;y describes Team Trump-- White House and Cabinet, top to bottom. I suppose if you insisted on digging down, you would have to say the ones who have the most impact on Trump and can make something happen are the worst-- so Bannon. Would anyone dispute that he's the worst of the Trumpists? No one with any sense. But there is Sebastian Gorka, a very severely mentally ill Hungarian who managed to get a green card by lying that he had never been associated with a fascist organization. Last month we took a close look at what Gorka has been up to and why he poses a danger to the country. Thursday the Forward's Lili Bayer led with an explosive exclusive about his Nazi connections. Real-thing Nazis, not dress-up Alt-right closet cases like Milo and that one everyone punches in the face wherever he goes. Gorka, she wrote, ", is a formal member of a Hungarian far-right group that is listed by the U.S. State Department as having been 'under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany' during World War II." Trumpy-the-Clown does it again!

The elite order, known as the Vitézi Rend, was established as a loyalist group by Admiral Miklos Horthy, who ruled Hungary as a staunch nationalist from 1920 to October 1944. A self-confessed anti-Semite, Horthy imposed restrictive Jewish laws prior to World War II and collaborated with Hitler during the conflict. His cooperation with the Nazi regime included the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews into Nazi hands.

Gorka’s membership in the organization-- if these Vitézi Rend leaders are correct, and if Gorka did not disclose this when he entered the United States as an immigrant-- could have implications for his immigration status. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual specifies that members of the Vitézi Rend “are presumed to be inadmissible” to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Gorka-- who Vitézi Rend leaders say took a lifelong oath of loyalty to their group-- did not respond to multiple emails sent to his work and personal accounts, asking whether he is a member of the Vitézi Rend and, if so, whether he disclosed this on his immigration application and on his application to be naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2012. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.

But Bruce Einhorn, a retired immigration judge who now teaches nationality law at Pepperdine University, said of this, “His silence speaks volumes.”

Gorka's hero Admiral Worthy with his other hero

The group to which Gorka reportedly belongs is a reconstitution of the original group on the State Department list, which was banned in Hungary until the fall of Communism in 1989. There are now two organizations in Hungary that claim to be the heirs of the original Vitézi Rend, with Gorka, according to fellow members, belonging to the so-called “Historical Vitézi Rend.” Though it is not known to engage in violence, the Historical Vitézi Rend upholds all the nationalist and oftentimes racial principles of the original group as established by Horthy.



Einhorn said these nuances did not relieve Gorka of the obligation, if he’s a member, to disclose his affiliation when applying for his visa or his citizenship.

“This is a group that advocates racialist nativism,” said Einhorn. If Gorka did not disclose his affiliation with it, he said, this would constitute “failure to disclose a material fact,” which could undermine the validity of both his immigration status and claim to citizenship.

“It’s a material fact that, if disclosed, would have provoked a significant inquiry into the specific post-war role of this organization and Gorka’s activities in it,” he said.

Before serving 17 years as an immigration judge, Einhorn was deputy chief at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations. The unit, which has since been disbanded, was charged with finding and deporting Nazis and members of other extremist groups who entered America illegally by lying about or hiding their background. He noted that individuals who apply for both visas and citizenship are specifically asked to name all organizations they belong to due to the government’s interest in scrutinizing those affiliated with extremist groups, and in particular those on the State Department’s list.

If Gorka did not disclose his Vitézi Rend affiliation, said Einhorn, he thereby “foreclosed the opportunity for U.S. officials to pursue that inquiry with him.” No statute of limitations exists for such violations, he noted.

...Gorka, who pledged his loyalty to the United States when he took American citizenship in 2012, is himself a sworn member of the Vitézi Rend, according to both Gyula Soltész-- a high-ranking member of the Vitézi Rend’s central apparatus-- and Kornél Pintér-- a leader of the Vitézi Rend in Western Hungary who befriended Gorka’s father through their activities in the Vitézi Rend.

Soltész, who holds a national-level leadership position at the Vitézi Rend, confirmed to the Forward in a phone conversation that Gorka is a full member of the organization.

“Of course he was sworn in,” Pintér said, in a phone interview. “I met with him in Sopron [a city near Hungary’s border with Austria]. His father introduced him.”

“In today’s world it is rare to meet anyone as well-bred as Sebastian or his father, Pali,” he added.

If correct, Gorka’s membership in the order is notable because, as Pintér and other members explained, affiliation is possible only via a solemn initiation rite in which new members take an oath swearing undying allegiance to the Hungarian nation and the Vitézi Rend’s goals:

“I, Vitez [name], swear on the Holy Crown that I know the Order’s goals and code, and based on the orders of the Captain and Order Superiors will follow them for the rest of my life. I never betrayed my Hungarianness, and was never and am not currently a member of an anti-national or secret organization. So help me God.”

Several commentators also noted that in his 2008 doctoral dissertation at Hungary’s Corvinus University, Gorka presented his name as Sebastian L. v. Gorka. The “v.” is an initial used by members of the Vitézi Rend.

But Gorka did not use the initial only in academic papers.

In June 2011, Gorka testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee. His official testimony did not list his name as Sebastian L. Gorka, but rather as Dr. Sebastian L. v. Gorka.

“Of course, only after the oath,” György Kerekes, a current member of the Vitézi Rend, told the Forward when asked if anyone may use the initial “v.” without going through the Vitézi Rend’s application process and an elaborate swearing-in ceremony.

As the son of a member of the Vitézi Rend, Gorka is eligible to apply for membership. But membership is not bestowed automatically, and he cannot use the initial in his name without actively applying for membership and taking the formal oath to the organization.

Gorka’s self-identification to a congressional committee as Dr. Sebastian L. v. Gorka thus indicates that Gorka either misrepresented his identity to Congress in 2011 or is currently misrepresenting his affiliation with the Vitézi Rend, potentially having taken an oath to Hungarian nationalist and racist principles.

The Vitézi Rend, which was established in 1920 for Horthy’s loyal followers, is listed by the State Department as one of many groups in Germany and the countries it occupied as collaborationist “criminal organizations” with the Nazis as determined by the post-war International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The group was among those Horthy rewarded with real estate taken from hundreds of thousands of Jews his government deported to Nazi concentration camps.

Dissolved in Hungary after World War II under the terms of the Allies’ armistice with Hungary, it was reconstituted by veterans’ groups in exile, including prewar members of the group appointed by Horthy. It was re-established inside Hungary after communism’s collapse in 1989. According to State Department guidelines, while Vitézi Rend membership “does not automatically render the alien ineligible for a visa, the applicant has the burden of establishing that, despite being a member of a designated criminal organization, he or she did not participate in activities that would fall within the purview of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The guidelines cite a provision of the act barring entry to the United States to “participants in Nazi persecution, genocide, or the commission of any act of torture or extrajudicial killing.”

...Though Gorka did not respond to inquiries about his relationship to the Vitézi Rend, when the Forward revealed in February that he had co-founded a political party together with former members of the Hungarian far-right Jobbik party and wrote articles for a Hungarian paper known for its anti-Semitism, the White House aide responded on Twitter by quoting a friend: “Sharing a room w Helen Keller does not make 1 blind; sharing a subway car w Albert Einstein does not make 1 a genius.”

But Einhorn, the immigration expert, stressed a larger moral principle was at stake.

“Gorka is part of an administration issuing travel bans against countries and people as a whole,” he said. “For someone who is part of this effort to not answer your question [about his membership] and yet support what’s gong on in the West Wing where he works is the height of hypocrisy. The administration that makes so much of protecting us from extremists while looping the guilty in with the innocent should at least require its officials tell the truth.”

Thursday Jerry Nadler sent a letter to the Regime asking for information of Gorka. He told Señor Trumpanzee he was "extremely disturbed" after reading the report in the Forward and asked Trump to immediately clarify whether Gorka is indeed a member of this racist and anti-Semitic group (Vitézi Rend), "and, if so, that you take appropriate action."

Because of Vitézi Rend’s close association with the Nazi regime, under State Department guidelines, members are “presumed to be inadmissible to the United States.” If Sebastian Gorka is indeed a member of this organization, as high-ranking leaders of the organization claim he is, he would have been required to disclose this information on his immigration application, and on his application to be a naturalized U.S. citizen. Failing to do so, he may have been withholding important material facts about his background from the United States, in violation of the law. Therefore, I am asking that you provide the House Committee on the Judiciary with Sebastian Gorka’s immigration application and his application to be a U.S. citizen, so that the Committee can be assured that he did not enter this country under false pretenses.

The uncertainly over Mr. Gorka’s membership in this racist and anti-Semitic organization, and the White House’s silence in answering questions regarding his status, raise further concerns that this issue is not being treated with the urgency it deserves. Whether or not Mr. Gorka was honest in his immigration and citizenship applications, if he does in fact have ties with the Historical Vitézi Rend, I hope that you would have no place for someone who shares that organization’s offensive views in your Administration.

I look forward to your reply.

So far, Trump is refusing to reply to Nadler's letter. Maybe it will come up eventually in the impeachment hearings.

Would Sebastian Gorka-- AKA #FakeTerrorismExpert-- Be Able To See The White House Psychiatrist If Ted Lieu's Bill Passes?

I'm sure there will be endless debates about who is the worst of the worst in Trump's nasty little proto-fascist kleptocracy. There's Bannon, of course, who would be the hands down early fave, but let's not forget Stephen Miller, Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross, Tom Price, Scott Pruitt... and, yes... there's also the Hungarian neo-Nazi, Sebastian Gorka, who we took at look at last week. And we're not the only ones looking closely at the neo-Nazi from... well, no one really knows when he was born or where he was born but people who know him swear he's an earthling who once served as a British spy and, later, as a professional fascist in his ancestral home, Hungary. Eventually he married an unfortunate-looking somewhat older American heiress-- like him, a psychotic islamophobe and hate-monger-- and managed to acquire U.S. citizenship that way. They were both Breitbart bloggers who help Bannon drive Trump further and further from mainstream thought on national security issues.

Anyway, most people who know anything about him claim Gorka is certifiably insane. You'll probably come to the same conclusion by listening to the taped phone conversation (on the 2 YouTubes above) that he had with Republican South Carolina counterterrorism expert Michael Smith. Gorka doesn't like Smith's twitter feed and phoned him up to threaten him with a lawsuit. Listen as Smith, tapping the call after the first 5 minutes, draws him out; it's funny-- or chilling, depending on your perspective. At first Smith, who has been outspoken about Gorka's obvious lack of competence for his job, thought it was a prank call. Smith, who says he voted for Trump says he was "stunned that the administration would hire him to work in the White House on such critical issues as counterterrorism. This could blow up in our faces, to have basically an amateur working on such important policies and working with people like Steve Bannon."

You'll notice if you listen to the taped call that Gorka invited Smith-- over and over and over-- to meet him at the White House. The day after the call, though, he withdrew the invitation. "Given your statements for the latest attack piece and continued disparaging Tweets against not only myself but the administration and president, consider your invitation to meet withdrawn."

Newsweek picked up on the story last week.

Gorka apparently used his personal cell phone, with a northern Virginia area code, rather than making the call from his White House office or government-issued cell phone, where it would be officially logged, Smith says. The terrorism expert says he suspected Gorka “was trying to conceal the call.”

Smith says he did not begin recording the call until after Gorka allegedly threatened to sue Smith. In an email to Newsweek, Smith said that, “Gorka asserted my tweets about him merited examination by the White House legal counsel. In effect, he was threatening to entangle me in a legal battle for voicing my concerns on Twitter that he does not possess expertise sufficient to assist the president of the United States with formulating and guiding national security policies.”

...Smith has kept up a steady stream of jabs at Gorka since he learned that the Hungarian born, British-educated terrorism specialist had been hired by President Donald Trump’s top adviser Steve Bannon. Both Bannon and Gorka came from the far-right Breitbart News, where Bannon was editor-in-chief and Gorka was national security editor. On his Twitter page, Gorka describes himself as “deputy assistant to the 45th president of America” and an “Irregular Warfare Strategist.”

His views on the “global jihadist movement,” as he calls it, align with a small cadre of right-wing observers who depict Islamist militants and extremists as being driven principally by passages from the Koran, rather than by government repression, or sectarian, tribal, political or economic factors.

On Tuesday, Smith tweeted that Gorka “doesn't know the enemies' ideologies well enough to combat them.” In an earlier tweet directed at Trump, Smith wrote: “You are endangering the lives of Americans by hiring fake ‘terrorism experts.’”

...[Q]uestions about Gorka’s views and credentials to speak authoritatively on Islam and terrorism were severely criticized in lengthy feature articles in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal in recent days. He also received a wave of unfavorable publicity in January 2016 when he was arrested for trying to pass through a TSA checkpoint at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. carrying a loaded handgun. He was charged with a misdemeanor and sentenced to six months probation.

One of his most influential critics is Cindy Storer, a leading former CIA expert on the relationship between religious extremism and terrorism.

“He thinks the government and intelligence agencies don’t know anything about radicalization, but the government knows a lot and thinks he’s nuts,” Storer was quoted as saying in the Post.

Smith asked Gorka why he didn’t telephone Storer, "who called you nuts in the Washington Post,” to complain. Gorka responded that Storer’s remark wasn’t “in a Twitter feed that is being sent to people on Capitol Hill.”

Gorka’s scholarship has also come under scrutiny by Mia Bloom, an expert on “transcultural violence” at Georgia State University. “He doesn’t understand a fraction of what he pretends to know about Islam,” Bloom was quoted as saying by the Journal. Bloom has participated in TV appearances with Gorka and at a panel last year at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Nor has Gorka-- who does not speak Arabic and has never lived in a Muslim-majority nation, according to news accounts-- submitted any of his articles for review in scholarly journals, says Lawrence P. Rubin, associate editor of Terrorism and Political Violence, the leading journal in that field.

“Gorka has not submitted anything to the journal in the last five or so years, according to my records and we have never used him as a reviewer,” Rubin tells Newsweek. “We would not have used him as a reviewer because he is not considered a terrorism expert by the academic or policy community.”

A government expert on Middle East radical movements, who asked not to be named for fear of being fired, tells Newsweek she was disturbed to hear Gorka suggest at a talk he gave in Israel a few years ago that he knew of a “specific person in the [Obama White House] who was deliberately misleading the government” on terrorism issues. “He said he wouldn’t name the person on stage but would provide the particulars” privately to anyone there who wanted to know, she said. Noting the audience was full of potential adversaries, she called Gorka’s remark “‘beyond the pale.”

Several times during his call with Smith, Gorka invited him to the White House to hash out their differences “face to face, man to man,” as he put it in one exchange. They set a tentative date for March 8.

But Smith warned Gorka that “in absolute fairness to you, what you will hear is that I have very serious concerns about our national security,” and in particular Gorka’s role “as an adviser to the president of the United States.”

“If you make a devastating case, then so be it,” Gorka said.

“So be it?” Smith answered. “Then what, you’ll acknowledge you're out of your league?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Gorka said. “Bring it on."

Late Wednesday, Gorka withdrew his invitation.

Meet Sebastian Gorka, Another Sick, Dangerous Nazi Trump Has Brought Into The Government

Fox's pajama boy Nazi Sebastian Gorka never tells the truth about anything-- never

Elizabeth Warren is being pummeled by Republicans trying to demonize her. I imagine this will go on not just from now until her 2018 reelection, but from now 'til her 2020 presidential nomination. Yesterday she told her supporters why the attacks from the far right don't phase her-- her beliefs are strong and clear. Here's what she laid out as why the GOP attacks don't get to her:

• I believe that the big banks need tougher rules and more accountability-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for Wall Street reform, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that students should be able to get an education without getting crushed by debt-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for debt-free college, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that nobody who works full time should live in poverty-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to raise the minimum wage, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that after a lifetime of hard work, seniors should be able to retire with dignity-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to protect and expand Social Security and Medicare, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe in climate change-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to protect our air and water, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe in common sense gun reform-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to keep our kids safe from military-style assault weapons, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that a woman has a right to make health care decisions over her own body and I support Planned Parenthood-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for women’s health, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that millionaires and billionaires should pay at least the same tax rates as their secretaries-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to stop the special breaks and loopholes, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• And I believe that powerful corporations and billionaires have too much influence over our politics-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for campaign finance and ethics reform, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

Sounds good for America, right? At the same time CNN was outlining why right-wing money bags and Vegas/Macao gambling mobster Sheldon Adelson was braying about why Trump would be the best American president ever-- for Israel. Adelson ponied up over $80 million to Republicans and right-wing causes in the 2016 cycle. He's the agent for Israel's political right in America. Funny, because while Adelson was talking with GOP donors about how good Trump would be for his version of Israel, Lili Bayer was writing at the [Jewish Daily] Forward about how one of the fascist shits surrounding Trump, Sebastian Gorka, is an actual Nazi, not someone playing pretend.

When photographs recently emerged showing Sebastian Gorka, President Donald Trump’s high-profile deputy assistant, wearing a medal associated with the Nazi collaborationist regime that ruled Hungary during World War II, the controversial security strategist was unapologetic.

“I’m a proud American now and I wear that medal now and again,” Gorka told Breitbart News. Gorka, 46, who was born in Britain to Hungarian parents and is now an American citizen, asked rhetorically, “Why? To remind myself of where I came from, what my parents suffered under both the Nazis and the Communists, and to help me in my work today.”

But an investigation by the Forward into Gorka’s activities from 2002 to 2007, while he was active in Hungarian politics and journalism, found that he had close ties then to Hungarian far-right circles, and has in the past chosen to work with openly racist and anti-Semitic groups and public figures.

Gorka’s involvement with the far right includes co-founding a political party with former prominent members of Jobbik, a political party with a well-known history of anti-Semitism; repeatedly publishing articles in a newspaper known for its anti-Semitic and racist content; and attending events with some of Hungary’s most notorious extreme-right figures.

...In the United States, Gorka, who was appointed deputy assistant to the president on January 20, is known as a television commentator, a professor and an “alt-right” writer who describes himself as a counterterrorism expert. A close associate of Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, Gorka is now part of Bannon’s key in-house White House think tank, the Strategic Initiatives Group. The newly formed group consists of figures close to Trump and is seen by some as a rival to the National Security Council in formulating policies for the president.

Gorka, who views Islam as a religion with an inherent predilection for militancy, has strong supporters among some right-leaning think tanks in Washington. “Dr. Gorka is one of the most knowledgeable, well-read and studied experts on national security that I’ve ever met,” Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, told the Forward. Humire has known Gorka for nearly a decade, and considers him “top-notch.”

Born in London to parents who fled Hungary’s post-World War II Communist regime, Gorka has had a career that’s marked by frequent job changes and shifting national allegiances. The U.S. government is the third sovereign state to hire him in a national security role. As a young man, he was a member of the United Kingdom’s Territorial Army reserves, where he served in the Intelligence Corps. Then, following the fall of Communism in Hungary, he was employed in 1992 by the country’s Ministry of Defense. He worked there for five years, apparently on issues related to Hungary’s accession to NATO.

Gorka’s marriage in 1996 to an American, Katharine Cornell, an heir to Pennsylvania-based Cornell Iron Works, helped him become a U.S. citizen in 2012.

It was during his time in Hungary that Gorka developed ties to the country’s anti-Semitic and ultranationalist far right.

During large-scale anti-government demonstrations in Hungary in 2006, Gorka took on an active role, becoming closely involved with a protest group called the Hungarian National Committee (Magyar Nemzeti Bizottság). Gorka took on the roles of translator, press coordinator and adviser for the group.

Among the four Committee members named as the group’s political representatives was László Toroczkai, then head of the 64 Counties Youth Movement. Toroczkai founded that group in 2001 to advocate for the return of parts of modern-day Serbia, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine to form a Greater Hungary, restoring the country’s pre-World War I borders.

In 2004, two years before the Movement’s involvement in the 2006 protests, Hungarian authorities opened an investigation into the Movement’s newspaper, Magyar Jelen, when an article referred to Jews as “Galician upstarts” and went on to argue: “We should get them out. In fact, we need to take back our country from them, take back our stolen fortunes. After all, these upstarts are sucking on our blood, getting rich off our blood.” At the time of the article’s publication, Toroczkai was both an editor at the paper and the Movement’s official leader.

Toroczkai currently serves as vice president of Jobbik and is the mayor of a village near the border Hungary shares with Serbia. Last year, he gained notoriety in the West for declaring a goal of banning Muslims and gays from his town.

In January 2007, inspired by the 2006 protests and his experience with the Hungarian National Committee, Gorka announced plans to form a new political party, to be known as the New Democratic Coalition. Gorka had previously served as an adviser to Viktor Orbán, now Hungary’s right-wing nationalist prime minister. But following Orbán’s failed attempts to bring down Hungary’s then-Socialist government, Gorka grew disenchanted with Orbán’s Fidesz party.

In his email exchange with the Forward for this article, Gorka explained: “The Coalition was established in direct response to the unhealthy patterns visible at the time in Hungarian conservative politics. It became apparent to me that the effect of decades of Communist dictatorship had taken a deeper toll on civil society than was expected.”

Gorka co-founded his political party with three other politicians. Two of his co-founders, Tamás Molnár and Attila Bégány, were former members of Jobbik. Molnár, a senior Jobbik politician, served as the party’s vice president until shortly before joining Gorka’s new initiative, and was also a member of the Hungarian National Committee during the 2006 protests, issuing statements together with extremist militant figures such as Toroczkai.

Jobbik has a long history of anti-Semitism. In 2006, when Gorka’s political allies were still members of Jobbik, the party’s official online blog included articles such as The Roots of Jewish Terrorism and Where Were the Jews in 1956?, reference to the country’s revolution against Soviet rule. In one speech in 2010, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona said that “under communism we licked Moscow’s boots, now we lick Brussels’ and Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s.”

In founding the New Democratic Coalition, Gorka and the former Jobbik politicians aimed to represent “conservative values, decidedly standing up to corruption and bringing Christianity into the Constitution,” according to the party’s original policy program. At the time, Hungary’s constitution was secular.

The party’s founders did not see themselves as far right or anti-Semitic.

“I knew Gorka as a strongly Atlanticist, conservative person,” Molnár, the former Jobbik vice president and co-founder of Gorka’s party, told the Forward in a phone conversation. He added that he could not imagine Gorka having anti-Semitic views.

...In December 2004, the U.S. State Department reported bluntly to Congress that, “the weekly newspaper Magyar Demokrata published anti-Semitic articles and featured articles by authors who have denied the Holocaust.”

Who wrote Trump's CPAC speech yesterday?

In the summer of 2007, Bencsik became one of the founders of the Hungarian Guard, a now-banned paramilitary organization known for assaulting and intimidating members of Hungary’s Roma community. The perpetrators in a spate of racially motivated murders of Roma in 2008 and 2009 were found to have connections to the Guard.

Gorka’s articles for Magyar Demokrata focused not only on decrying Hungary’s then-Socialist government, but also on highlighting the perceived injustices of the Treaty of Versailles, the post-World War I agreement that led to the loss of two-thirds of prewar Hungary’s territory.

“We fought on the wrong side of a war for which we were not responsible, and were punished to an extent that was likely even more unjust-- with the exception of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire-- than any other punishment in the modern age,” Gorka wrote in a 2006 article in Magyar Demokrata.

Asked about his choice of journalistic outlets, Gorka wrote, “I am […] unfamiliar with Bencsik. I believe it was one of his colleagues who asked me if I wanted to write some OpEds.” Gorka told the Forward that his writing at the time shows “how everything I did was in the interests of a more transparent and healthy democracy in Hungary. This included a rejection of all revanchist tendencies and xenophobic cliques.”

Gorka’s claim to be unfamiliar with Bencsik must be weighed against his deep immersion in Hungarian politics and Benscik’s status as a major figure in Hungary’s right-wing political scene. At the time, Gorka gave public interviews as an “expert” on the Hungarian Guard, which Bencsik helped to found. In one 2007 interview, Gorka clarified his own view of the Guard, saying, “It’s not worth talking about banning” the group. Despite its extreme rhetoric against minorities, Gorka said, “The government and media are inflating this question.”

It was in mid-February that Gorka’s affinity for Hungarian nationalist and far-right ideas first came to the American public’s attention. Eli Clifton of the news website Lobelog noticed from a photograph that the new deputy assistant to the president had appeared at an inauguration ball in January wearing a Hungarian medal known as Vitézi Rend [up top]. The medal signifies a knightly order of merit founded in 1920 by Admiral Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s longtime anti-Semitic ruler and Hitler’s ally during World War II. Notwithstanding this alliance, and the group’s designation as Nazi-collaborators by the U.S. State Department, many within Hungary’s right revere Horthy for his staunch nationalism during the overall course of his rule from 1920 to 1944.

Breitbart, the “alt-right” publication, where Gorka himself served as national security editor prior to joining the White House staff, defended his wardrobe choice, writing on February 14 that, “as any of his Breitbart News colleagues could testify, Gorka is not only pro-Israel but ‘pro-Jewish,’ and defends both against the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.”

“In 1979 my father was awarded a declaration for his resistance to a dictatorship, and although he passed away 14 years ago, I wear that medal in remembrance of what my family went through and what it represents today, to me, as an American,” Gorka told Breibart on February 15, as the controversy regarding his choice to wear a Horthy-era medal intensified.

But the medal was not the first time Gorka expressed appreciation for symbols that many associate with Hungary’s World War II-era Nazi sympathizers. In 2006, Gorka defended the use of the Arpad flag, which Hungary’s murderous Arrow Cross Party used as their symbol. The Hungarian Arrow Cross Party killed thousands of Jews during World War II, shooting many of them alongside the Danube River and throwing them into the water. Gorka told the news agency JTA at the time that “if you say eight centuries of history can be eradicated by 18 months of fascist distortion of symbols, you’re losing historic perspective.”

After the failure of his new party in 2007, Gorka moved to the United States and over the past 10 years has worked for the Department of Justice, Marine Corps University, National Defense University, and Joint Special Operations University. Former colleagues in the States questioned the quality of Gorka’s work on Islam, and said that he shied away from publishing in peer-reviewed journals, according to the Washington Post.

Retired Lt. Col. Mike Lewis told the Post that when Gorka was lecturing to members of the armed forces, he “made a difficult and complex situation simple and confirmed the officers’ prejudices and assumptions.”

...Over the past few weeks, Gorka has become an informal spokesman for the White House, appearing on radio and television shows to defend Trump’s rhetoric and policy choices-- including those that are relevant to the Jewish community.

Asked during a February 6 talk show to acknowledge that it was “questionable” for the White House to leave out any specific mention of Jews as the Nazis’ target in its Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, which referred only to “innocent people” being victimized, Gorka called the criticism “asinine."

“No, I’m not going to admit it,” he said. “It’s absurd. You’re making a statement about the Holocaust. Of course it’s about the Holocaust because that’s what the statement’s about. It’s only reasonable to twist it if your objective is to attack the president.”

It remains unclear whether the White House ever took a deep look into Gorka’s activities in Hungary. Six White House staffers have reportedly been dismissed for failing FBI background checks; Gorka was not among them.

In 2002, Hungary’s intelligence service denied Gorka a security clearance. Gorka was nominated by the right-wing Fidesz party as its candidate to be an expert in an investigation into allegations that then-Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy had served as a counterintelligence officer during the Communist era. At the time, Gorka’s earlier ties to British intelligence were considered a concern, and he was ultimately not allowed to take part in the investigation.

Gorka’s friends and close associates in the United States do not believe that he is ideologically part of Hungary’s far right.

...Gorka’s former political partners in Hungary are pleased with his successes in Washington.

“I am happy, because this could be good for Hungarian-American relations,” said Molnár, the former Jobbik vice president and co-founder of Gorka’s short-lived party, in his conversation with the Forward. “But I was surprised…No Hungarian public figure has ever been so close to the White House.”

Does Nazi iconography indicate someone might be a Nazi?