At UNC, Gorka addresses fake news, ‘sexy’ jihad and Donald Trump Jr.

Before Sebastian Gorka spoke a word at UNC-Chapel Hill on Monday, some decried his speech.

The event featuring Gorka, the former aide to President Donald Trump and editor for Breitbart News, was sponsored by UNC’s College Republicans, Turning Point USA and Christians United For Israel – and was partially funded by student fees approved by UNC’s student government.

A week before his appearance, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Gorka should be disqualified from speaking at universities because of his “extremist and Islamophobic views, along with his reported associations with racists and anti-Semitic groups.”

The student newspaper asked “was no one else available?”

And as students took their seats in the Genome Science Building to hear Gorka speak, about 45 protestors could be heard chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, fascist scum has got to go!” on the sidewalk outside.

So what did Gorka say? For those expecting a full-throated defense of Trump, critiques of the media and a call for swift action against radial Islamic terrorists – he didn’t disappoint.

Here are seven topics Gorka touched on, which include everything from the economy to fighting the perception that “the life of jihad” is “sexy.”

Fake news

Gorka said that, during his time as an advisor in the White House, he’d open the New York Times or Washington Post every morning and read about a decision “where I had been in the room” and the press report was “literally 180 degrees out of whack.”

“That wasn’t a rare occurrence,” he said. “About 80 to 90 percent of it is fallacious, based on false or bad sources or in some cases … literally made up to serve some political agenda.”

Fighting ISIS

Gorka said that Trump, unlike other presidents, “understands the threat” of the Islamic State group and is making progress. He said a special forces operative told him military morale is up “because we know this commander has our back and … in Syria and Iraq, we are stacking the jihadis like cord wood.”

He later said Trump and the U.S. need to be forceful in deterring would-be terrorists not only by fighting but by using “counter-propaganda” that makes the jihadi flag “as reviled as the swastika.”

“Right now, being a jihadi from Marseille (France) to Boston is sexy,” he said. “That’s not good. It’s sexy to choose the life of jihad. We have to make it unsexy.”

The economy

Gorka said the stock market has increased 24 percent since Trump took office which, he said, is good news for all Americans.

“You don’t have to be a mucky muck at Goldman Sachs to care. Why? If you’re a barista at Starbucks, a letter carrier with the postal service, your retirement is indexed to the stock market,” he said. “So guess what, it’s good for all Americans. Look at what we’ve done with jobs. 1.5 million jobs created and the lowest unemployment in 17 years.”

Here’s what PolitiFact found when it looked into job growth under Trump.

Millennials loving socialism?

Gorka said that the Victims of Communism Foundation did a survey of millennials and found that “50 percent of millennials in America wish to live under socialism.”

“Of those polled, 26 percent thought Che Guevara was the hero of the last century. Che was a racist who hated blacks … and was a murderer,” Gorka said.

The biggest threat

Gorka said he built his career on studying Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group, which he referred to as “Sunni jihadist” organizations. He said those groups are “close range” targets “that will be dealt with.”

“The far larger threat to America is, in fact, Shia jihadism – meaning Iran, and meaning the mullahs – not the people of Iran or Persians, but the Iranian Republican regime,” Gorka said.

The regime “believes in things like occultation of the hidden imam and other apocalyptic thoughts,” he continued. “And this is a regime which every Friday declares war on us – war and destruction. That America and Israel must be destroyed.”

Gorka said that America’s deal with Iran only slowed the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, but didn’t stop it.

Trump Jr. and Wikileaks

Gorka took a question from the crowd: Any thoughts on Donald Trump Jr. “working with Wikileaks?” The UNC event occurred on the same day that congressional officials revealed that the president’s son corresponded with WikiLeaks, which has ties to the Russian government.

Gorka described Trump’s eldest son as a patriot who’s “gone through as much of a smear campaign as his father.” He said he didn’t know what the student was referring to, but assumed the question referred to Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer “as a favor to his old buddy who’s a music promoter.” He said she requested the meeting under “false pretenses.”

“She’s not there to dish any kind of information useful to the campaign,” Gorka said, referencing separate news about Donald Trump Jr. “She’s there for a personal issue as a lobbyist in regards to something something called the Magnitsky Act, which has to do with the suspension of adoptions of Russian children by U.S. nationals. It was a total smokescreen, so then he said ‘OK, thank you, goodbye.”

Here’s what PolitiFact found after news broke of the meeting with the Russian lawyer.

Hillary Clinton, DNC, collusion

Gorka segued from the Donald Trump Jr. question to talk about former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee allegedly working with foreign countries.

Gorka said the DNC sent one of its employees to the Ukrainian embassy “because the Ukrainian government promised dirt on Donald Trump, not only to collect the dirt but to coordinate an information campaign with a foreign government against Donald Trump,” he said.

“If you want collusion, that’s collusion,” Gorka said.

There are similarities and differences between the Russian and Ukranian meetings. Here’s a PolitiFact summary of the situation.

He described the inquiry into research firm Fusion GPS as the “gift that keeps on giving.”

“A dodgy intelligence agent from MI6 was hired to build an attack file on Donald Trump using Russian propaganda, we now know his sources were Russian propaganda, and that file was invoiced to Hillary Clinton’s lawyer at the DNC for $12 million,” Gorka said.

“That is collusion,” he said. “The source documents that were faked in that report came from Russian assets.”

Here’s a summary from the Washington Post Fact Checker of the allegations he referred to.

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 12:27 PM with the headline "At UNC, Gorka addresses fake news, ‘sexy’ jihad and Donald Trump Jr.."