Sebastian Gorka, whose official Fox News title is “national security strategist,” has such little credibility among Fox’s “hard news” shows that he has been effectively banned from appearing on them, according to an article in The Daily Beast.
The quotes obtained by The Daily Beast suggest Gorka is loathed:
One Fox News producer in the news division told The Daily Beast that their show avoided booking Gorka because he was essentially “useless” to them, and could offer nothing more than his typically unabashed, unconditional cheerleading for Trump.
Another staffer working on a hard-news show bluntly stated that “we will take other counterterrorism experts. We will not take Seb. Ever.”
As the Fox staffer explained, the reason for this is a general opinion within the news division and among reporting staff that Gorka is a “clown” and not an “objective” commentator on national security issues. (Gorka is often tagged by his critics as an academic fraud and an anti-Muslim zealot posing as an expert on radical Islam and foreign policy.)
Gorka has not been seen on any Fox “news” programs such as Special Report, Fox News Sunday or Shepard Smith Reporting since February, The Daily Beast calculated. The article does not report on what happened to make Gorka news persona non grata. But we do know that in mid-January, word got out that there’s an outstanding arrest warrant for him in Hungary. In late February, Gorka behaved thuggishly toward a reporter at CPAC. However, this was hardly the worst news about Gorka. In November, just two weeks before signing his Fox contract, he suggested that Hillary Clinton should be executed over the phony Uranium One “scandal” debunked by Fox News. In March, 2017, Gorka was outed by the Forward as a member of a Hungarian far-right group linked to the Nazis.
Not surprisingly, Sean Hannty thinks Gorka is terrific. He hosts Gorka almost every night. In fact, Gorka has credited Hannity for his contract at Fox.
This is yet another indication of the rift between Fox’s news division and its opinion programming. But it’s also an indication of the rift between the news division and Donald Trump. The Daily Beast reports that Trump is a Gorka fan and has “been known to enthusiastically ask people around the West Wing if they had checked out a specific, recently aired Gorka clip.”
Originally published at Newshounds.us
