Sebastian Gorka dismisses the negative coverage of him as "predictable" and instead asserts that it validates he's on the right path, the counterterrorism adviser to President Donald Trump told The Washington Free Beacon.
"These attacks are just too predictable," Gorka told the Free Beacon in a lengthy profile. "As they say in the military, 'you're only taking flak if you're over the target.'"
Gorka has been the target of attacks from the mainstream media mostly for framing the country's war on terror as being an attack on Islam.
Instead, Gorka's position lines up with the president's and that of the administration; it's a war on radical Islamic terrorism — a definition the previous administration was loathe to address.
"As the president said [Friday] we will 'obliterate' groups like ISIS and wipe the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth," Gorka told the Free Beacon.
Gorka has been on the front line of Trump's travel ban, having first been consulted about it and then as a defender of it.
"It's about the threat to America, about people being mowed down in Nice, about people being killed in mass numbers in Paris and Brussels and Istanbul," Gorka said two weeks ago. "We don't want that to happen on our shores. That's why we did what we did."
Further, Gorka has widespread support from military brass who say he has been instrumental in preparing soldiers for the type of unconventional warfare displayed by ISIS and other terrorist groups.
"He made us better because he made us think," retired Marine Corps. Col. Raymond Damm, a professor at Marine Corps University, told the Free Beacon.
"Dr. Gorka can be polarizing because he does not follow the party line," Damm said. "[Terrorists] are scary and hate us because they have been taught to hate us their entire lives. Iron sharpens iron. Dr. Gorka made us better while he was here."