Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” White House senior director for counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka argued with host Brianna Keilar over mass shootings committed by transgender people.
GORKA: As you mentioned at the top of your monologue, we have the videos, we have the statements from the dead shooter that were clearly anti-Christian. Just as with the transgender attack on the Nashville Christian school in which more children were killed, there is an ideological connection to multiple of these attacks, where innocent children, especially Christians and Catholics, are targeted and that is very, very disturbing.
KEILAR: You have focused very much on the shooter being trans, and I do want to speak with you about that. But while I respect that you cannot reveal specifics about what the parents may be saying, can you characterize whether what they’re saying is helpful?
GORKA: No, I cannot do that. That would be utterly inappropriate from a policy position in the White House. We leave that to the local police authorities and to the FBI.
KEILAR: OK, so let me ask you about this. You know, 96 percent of attackers in — when you’re looking at the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, looking at 172 mass attacks in the U.S. between 2016 and 2020, 96 percent were non- trans men. So I know you’re focusing on the shooter being trans. The shooter was trans, and that is certainly of note. But are you missing the bigger picture here when you zero in on that, instead of more broadly these school shooters as an epidemic, and you perhaps miss the through line that connects them all?
GORKA: Well, no, because your facts obfuscate two things. You are using data based upon the predominant gun violence, which is gang-on-gang violence with zero ideological content. If you remove all of that, the gang violence on the streets of Chicago, L.A., Detroit, then you come down to a much smaller data set. So it’s like those who say gun violence in America causes so many deaths and then fail to note that the majority of the stats they are using refer to also suicides by gun, which, of course, is not what we are talking about here today.
So let’s concentrate on mass shootings at schools, specifically Christian or Catholic schools. Then the data set is wholly different. So don’t conflate different data sets just to make a political point. There was an ideological content to this attack. That’s what terrorism is. It’s not because somebody didn’t get the drug deal they wanted. It is an ideological message, whether it was anti-Israel, as in this case, whether it targeted President Trump in its rhetoric, as we saw on one of the magazines written by the perpetrator on that YouTube video, or whether we saw the fact that it was anti-Christian and targeting children. That has nothing to do with gang violence. Let’s not mix the two things up.
KEILAR: So let’s narrow it down then, because, by CNN’s count, when you look at 32 school shootings since 2020 in which you have four or more people who have been killed — so these are the larger school shootings, only three of 32 of those shootings were committed by transgender shooters.
GORKA: Yes, forgive me if I don’t go with CNN’s stats, OK? CNN has proven itself to be wholly inaccurate in all kinds of things for the last 10 years, perpetrators of the Russia, Russia hoax and that we didn’t have an open border. So please forgive me if I don’t take your stats for granted.
KEILAR: All right, it’s simple math, two of 32 shootings.
GORKA: No, it’s not. It’s distortions. It’s — no, you are distorting the facts. Let me be clear. In just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who are confused in their gender, seven in just the last couple of years. That’s inordinately high.
KEILAR: I saw what you tweeted. I see your list of seven. I see your list of seven. Two of them are — Sebastian, Mr. Gorka…
GORKA: I’m going to stick with the facts, and not CNN’s pseudo-facts.
KEILAR: OK. We can’t stick with your facts because they’re not accurate. In fact, in two of them, one of the ones you quoted…
GORKA: No, let’s talk about CNN’s reputation for accuracy.
KEILAR: In one of the ones in which you posted, there was no evidence that he was trans.
GORKA: Right.
KEILAR: In another, the individual is known within his family by male pronouns. He used anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
GORKA: See, you have an agenda.
KEILAR: No, well, let me ask you this. You have made it clear — and this is not going to change. You think transgender people are the problem here. So, what specifically do you think should be done?
GORKA: No. When did I say that?
KEILAR: All right, you clearly think it’s a — you think it’s a pattern.
GORKA: When did I say that, Brianna?
KEILAR: You tweeted about it.
GORKA: You just created live — you just created live fake news. You just did it right in front of the small viewership you have, OK?
KEILAR: Mr. Gorka, what do you think should be done here? You have zeroed in on the fact — on what you see is a problem, what you claim is a problem. What do you want to do about it? What do you want to do about this problem you see?
GORKA: I have noticed a disturbing — do you think it’s a problem that individuals are targeting little children at Catholic schools? Do you think that’s something we should ignore?
KEILAR: Of course I think that’s a problem.
GORKA: Thank you. So what we should do is we should look at the early warning signals, the signs. One of these shooters at a recent school shooting had 24 interactions with the local law enforcement. Now, that beggars belief. We should be providing off-ramps. We should be providing mental health options for these individuals. I find it hard to believe that an individual goes from getting his mother to sign a change-of-name certificate age 17 and then just a handful of years later is mowing down innocent children in a church pew during a Catholic mass, and nobody realized there was a problem.
That’s what we have to address to save the next children from the next atrocity. It’s not about the sexual proclivities of the individual. It’s the fact that nobody seems to notice a very disturbing pattern towards violence. You don’t end up — you don’t wake up one morning saying, I’m going to do a video on YouTube threatening to kill the president, targeting Jews, targeting children.
That doesn’t happen overnight. Somebody saw that degradation. Somebody saw those mental issues and said nothing. That’s what we have to prevent. The early warning signals must be addressed if children’s lives are to be saved.
KEILAR: And what about all the non-trans school shooters?
GORKA: What about all the — same thing happens. They have multiple interactions with authorities, with their schools, with the principals. Why is something not being done? Instead of blaming an inanimate object, which is the weapon, how about addressing the human being instead and giving them aid, giving them psychological support, giving them an off-ramp? That’s what needs to happen. We need to stop the violence before it occurs.
KEILAR: To that point, DHS cut funding to the Minnesota Department of Safety and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office in July that is the kind of funding that’s used to assess and manage mass violence threats like these. Was that a mistake and should it be reinstated?
GORKA: The same state of Minnesota that actually enacted gun-free zones that we know this killer actually favored in his manifesto, in his videos. He studied the Aurora shooters’ policy of looking for sites where individuals were not allowed to legally carry and protect themselves. So I’d start not with the policies coming out of a Department of Homeland Security that gets the threat. I was with Governor Noem just a few days ago. And I concentrate on those municipalities and those governors like Tim Walz, who do what? Disarm honest citizens who could protect lives and save lives. Let’s start there.
Read the full article here
