The Daily Signal - #332: Sebastian Gorka on the Dangers of Socialism

Episode Date: November 4, 2018

On today’s show we feature an interview with Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and author of the new book, “Why We Fight: Defeating America's Enemies—With No Apologies.”Gorka breaks down the most serious threats to American security and how Trump is combatting them. We also discuss Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings remade the Republican Party. Plus, Gorka's analysis of immigration, the dangers of socialism, and his first encounter with Trump.Also on today’s show:• Your letters to the editor. Don’t forget, your letter could be featured on our show; write us at [e-mail] or call 202-608-6205.• The Heritage Foundation's Tim Doescher, co-host of the Heritage Explains podcast, shares the exciting economic news from the most recent jobs report.The Daily Signal podcast is available on the Ricochet Audio Network. You also can listen on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts.If you like what you hear, please leave a review or give us feedback. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, November 5th. I'm Rob Blewey, editor-in-chief. And I'm Jenny Maltabano. On today's show, we'll feature an interview with Sebastian Gorka, a former aide to President Donald Trump. He has a new book, Why We Fight, Defeating America's Enemies, with no apologies. We'll also share your letters, and Tim Dessor joins us to share some great news about the economy. We're joined today by Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump,

an author of the new book Why We Fight Defeating America's Enemies with no apology. Sebastian, thanks for joining The Daily Signal. It's always great to be here. Thanks, Rob. So what are the most serious threats that we face today? Well, in Why We Fight, I go through the whole catalog of the threats that face us today, whether it's North Korea, Russia, Iran, or China, or global jihadism, which was the subject of my first book, defeating jihad.

And after my time in the White House, it's very clear. to me that there's, you know, we're going to deal with all of these threats. The ISIS Caliphate is already gone. The JCPOA Iran deal is dead. Russia is being put back in its box. But there is only one remaining strategic threat to America, and that's China. China has a plan. It's not secret. Anybody can read it. It's called One Belt One Road. And it is predicated on China, communist China, replacing America as the most powerful nation in the world by the 100th anniversary of their communist revolution. And they are going at it on all cylinders, whether it's buying up interests in Africa, whether it's corrupting politicians in Australia, whether it's building fake islands in the South China Sea to intimidate our friends and our partners.

But the good news is Donald Trump understands the threat, and as you've seen by recent decisions, he's taken. taking it very, very seriously. Yeah, I think the thing that stands out for me is the threats that we're facing today are quite different from those of the past. Right. So what does that mean for how we go about addressing them? Well, the book doesn't just talk about threats. It talks about the evolution of warfare.

What every taxpayer, what every patriot needs to know about how war has changed over the ages. And I'll just illustrate it with one simple example. If you say to the average American war, what kind of images come to mind? I think for most people, if you haven't served in, you know, special forces in the Middle East, you think of what? Saving Private Ryan. You think of mass tanks fighting each other. You think of dog fights. We think about, you know, the conventional wars of the 20th century.

And as I demonstrate in why we fight, that's the exception to the rule. More than 80% of all war since Napoleon. So for the last 200 years, more than 80% is what is technically called irregular war. warfare or unconventional meaning a military in a uniform is fighting a non-state actor. Not in other countries' military, but a group, a guerrilla force. Or if you look at one of our first ever engagements as a republic, the Barbary Pirates. We didn't just start fighting jihadis after 9-11. We started almost as soon as the Republic was born fighting the Barbary pirates off the shores

of Tripoli, a phrase that might be familiar from the Marine Corps anthem. And those were jihadis, and that was almost 200 years ago. Well, you mentioned China. You mentioned North Korea. There are certainly a lot of challenges we're facing. How can President Trump most effectively communicate all of these challenges to the American people? I can't keep track of it because it grows so fast. But I think at the last time I looked, I think having 54 million Twitter followers certainly helps.

He is the arch communicator, whether it's how he labeled his opponents, during the election campaign, whether it's the MAGA hat. I mean, look at just Kanye West. What happens when a rock name, a millionaire, what is he a billionaire probably, Kanye probably puts on a red hat? That's a political statement. So how does he communicate? He has to take his branding tools from politics into the national security arena.

And I think he's doing it. Look at the first. I was there. I was in the White House when we prepared his first. address to Congress. It wasn't the State of the Union. If you recall, he gave a special address to the joint session of Congress. And in it, what did he do? Everybody, you know, all that never Trump is that he's going to go soft on us. He's going to go soft. He's not going to talk about radical Islamic terrorism. What did he do? It's the most powerful moment in his speech, if you

watch the video. He stops. He pauses. He looks right into the camera and he says, and we will defeat radical Islamic terrorism. So, you know, this is a man who, who, I don't think he's, He went to PR school, but he understands communication and PR branding like no other man I've met. Let's go back to China just for a moment. The president is now talking about some sort of a trade deal with China. Obviously, he's had engagement with high-level officials there. What do you make of some of the next steps that you expect to see from this administration when it comes to China? So there's two things.

There's two broad baskets. Number one is what they're doing illicitly. This is declassified now. your listeners can look it up, thanks to the DOJ, which brought the case and then declassified it. A few years ago, a Chinese agent was intercepted in the Midwest in a cornfield. Not in, you know, the bowels of the Pentagon or the NSA. He was apprehended in a cornfield. Why?

Because he was stealing samples of American genetically modified blight-resistant corn to take home to China so the communist government could reverse engineer that intellectual property that had been developed at the cost of who knows how many millions of dollars here in America. So number one, we have to counter the subversion, the theft of our intellectual property, the work of the Confucian institutes in America, which are funneling anti-Western messages. And then on top of that, the second basket is what the president does in the overt domain in the public diplomacy domain. And we have to send a very clear message to American companies.

Let's just internalize one thing. The most powerful information processing company in the world, Google, is happy in the name of profit to assist the Chinese communist government in censoring information from its own populace. There's a very, very serious word for that that begins with a T. that in a prior age, we would have used against any company that supports dictatorships that wish to undermine us. So we have to do, the president is and we have to build with heritage and everybody else, an information campaign that educates Americans that communism, on November the 9th, 1989,

the Berlin War may have come down, but communism is not dead. It certainly isn't. You know, President Trump has had so many foreign policy successes. which of those do you think have made America safer? I think what is it, the mandate for leadership? What's the heritage publication? In the first year, you went back to the latest version and you said the president had already implemented,

I think it was 62% of the 34% of the 364% of the 360 conservative policy recommendations. So I don't know how long we've got in your podcast, but let me tell you what's most important for me, is actually there's some photographs in the book from my time in the White House. And one of them really, for me, is very personal. It's the one I'm proudest of beyond being the president's strategist. I snuck into the back of the Rose Garden to watch the president make his announcement

on our exiting the Paris Climate Accords. For me, that was a seminal moment. It's not about nuclear weapons. It's not about building a wall. But the spiritual and the philosophical weight of that moment, cannot be overestimated. When the president said in that speech, I was elected by the citizens of Pittsburgh

to be their president, not the citizens of Paris. That is why Donald Trump won the election. So people miss it, even conservative commentators miss it. There is an underpinning to everything the president did in his campaign and everything he does is the commander in chief. The philosophical bedrock is national sovereignty.

It's the concept that national sovereignty, sovereignty is good, whether it's building the border, crushing ISIS, revitalizing our trade relations, rebuilding NATO. National sovereignty is not only good, it is healthy for a nation. And Donald Trump is doing it. Wherever you look, he's rebuilding national sovereignty. Again, the book is called Why We Fight by Sebastian Gorka. It's an excellent read.

Encourage our listeners to pick up a copy. Sebastian, I want to go back to, first of all, that moment that you described, obviously, our founder, Ed Fullner, from the Heritage Foundation, was there, and so many others have recounted other stories similar to yours. And let me just say, I joined the transition team before we won the election. It's a peculiar system. I don't know if the listeners are familiar, but the last two candidates before an election get given federal offices, a few blocks from the White House to build their transition team.

So Hillary was on one floor and we were on the other floor. And it was very nice. Very reassuring. The first day we walked into the transnational. transition offices, I think it was in October, to see a certain Mr. Fulness sitting in one of the cubicles. That made us feel much, much better. So, sorry, go ahead. Well, it goes to the heart of my question. I wanted you to take our listeners back to your first encounter with Donald Trump and where that journey kind of took you.

So the last chapter, because I actually wrote the bulk of this book before I joined the administration, but I wanted to tag on at the end a chapter on, I think I call it, how, a kid from West London ended up in the West Wing. And it's an American story. I found myself, you know, the day after the inaugural, I don't drink, so I didn't have a hangover. So, you know, Saturday, January the 21st, 8 a.m. I was walking around the White House. A guy with a funny accent, walking around the White House by himself, only in America. But how did I get there? Summer of 2015, I am a professor. I have the chair of military theory at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, love my Marines. And I get a phone call from a guy called Corey Lewandowski. Never heard of him,

didn't know he was. And he said, I work for Donald Trump, candidate, then candidate Trump, and he's preparing for the GOP debate this fall on national security. And he's looking for somebody to advise him on national security issues. Would you come to New York? I'd never done anything like that before in my life, spent most of my career working with the military and the FBI and canterism issues. And I said, sure. So I flew to New York a few days later, went to Trump Tower, went to the future president's private office, sitting as close to him as I am to you, just me and Donald Trump are in the corner, Corey.

And we'd never met before. And we have this incredible, wide-ranging blue sky discussion for about 40 minutes on, you name it. It was national security, but we went from the Civil War to nuclear weapons to ISIS, what have you. And then halfway through, classic Trump. he stops the conversation dead, turns to Corey and says, I like this guy, let's hire him.

Just quintessential Donald Trump. He sees something. He makes a decision. I signed my NDA, which I actually obey, unlike certain people. And then I started writing him some policy papers for the debates. Got to know General Flynn a little bit as the campaign progressed. And then was invited on to the transition team for the National Security Council. and in the last week, literally, I think it was four days before the inauguration, a guy who knew me called Steve Bannon, reached out and pulled me out of the NSC transition team and said, you're coming to work for me.

I'm the chief strategist to the president, and you'll be the strategist to the president. So it's an American tale. And what a journey it's been. I love all the photos in the book. Thank you. Thank you. Something that we talk about a lot on the Daily Signal is concerning that support for socialism seems to be growing in America. What is your message to those who embrace it, especially young people?

Well, as the child of people who suffered under fascism and then communism, it's really galling to me. It's hard to internalize when the victims of communism foundation does a poll, and the result is they find 42% of millennials would like to live in a socialist or communist America. it's hard. I mean, my father was tortured by, by communists. So what's my message? My message is, is Justice Kavanaugh. There's a moment in his testimony before the House after he was accused of heinous crimes, which clearly he was innocent of, where he says, clearly a righteous man, a godly man, and he looks at those senators who are trying to destroy him, like Whitaker Chambers, many, years before him, who I write about in the book. And he says, I don't care which way you vote. I don't care what happens, but I'm not going to allow you to get away with this. That's my message,

whether it's, you know, the local chapter of Turning Point USA, whether it's, you know, a heritage subscriber, whether it's somebody at Hillsdale who's going on to a grad school in some kind of hive of liberal insanity. Never give up and never let their lies undermine. your confidence in the nation. And I'll talk about my personal experience. So I'm in the White House. I'm a deputy of the president. And I understand I'm going to get attacked. It's politics. I'm a proxy for Donald Trump and a proxy for ban. And so I'll get attacked. But when it's 42 attack pieces by one journalist in three months, when they start attacking my children, when they start attacking my wife, the reputation of my dead mother, you realize that things get heavy, let's say, things get

heavy. You have a little crisis of, is it worth it for that massive paycheck, right? That massive government paycheck. And I came to a very simple realization. Well, I'm not hanging by my wrists from the ceiling of a torture chamber in a basement in Budapest like my father was. It's just words. So bring it, half-po. Bring it, Daily Beast. You're not going to win. Never give up. I have four stories in the book of American heroes, and the lesson from each of them is you never give up because the stakes are too important. This nation was the only nation, still is the only nation, founded on the principles of individual liberty and freedom. And we have to fight for them every day. Well, thank you for sharing that.

And, you know, the other thing that I want our listeners to know is you have been speaking about this topic and others to Heritage Foundation audiences all across the country. and we appreciate you're sharing those personal stories with them. The feedback we've received has been overwhelmingly positive. Well, that's very kind of you. I've loved working with Ed before he stepped down. I am incredibly, incredibly excited by K. James' understanding that socialism isn't a chapter in history. Socialism is a threat to America today.

So wherever I can talk about it, the president's club day or anywhere else and get the word out, It's an honor for me. So thank you, Kay, thank you, Ed, and thank you, you guys. Well, you mentioned Judge Kavanaugh,

Justice Kavanaugh, and your answer to the last one. Isn't it nice to say that? It certainly is. Justice Kavanaugh. You've said this has created a different version 2.0 of the Republican Party. What do you mean by that?

Well, I never thought, did any of us think that Lindsay Graham would teach the GOP how to be men? I never thought I'd say those words. I'll tell you the proof of what I'm,

what I mean by GOP 2.0. The Kavanaugh hearing was incredible. Even more important was, I think it was the Saturday after when he was confirmed, when the president, in front of the world's cameras, in front of billions of people, next to Kavanaugh, next to his family, from the White House declared that this man is innocent. That was the right thing to do. That was the just thing to do. But the pivot, from the political perspective, the pivotalness.

moment is the GOP press conference on the Friday before that, when the senior members of the judicial committee kind of wrapped up the events, watch that video again. Watch Grassley, watch everybody else. I have never, ever seen that level of anger amongst the most senior Republican politicians in America. I think something changed. I think politics as usual and thinking, hey, it doesn't matter if they've got a D behind their name or an art behind their name. It's all a nice elite club. I think that was broken. The behavior of the Democrats in those hearings, when you have people like Diane Feinstein who had a Chinese intelligence agent on her payroll for 20 years, when you have individuals like Cory Booker who actually admitted, admitted molesting somebody in high school, when you've got Kamala Harris, who built

her political career on questionable relationships. That's say, let's just leave it at that. Those people are sitting in judgment over a man who, and this isn't an insult, is literally a grown-up boy scout, is a church volunteer, volunteer coach, is the most quoted, the most quoted federal judge in Supreme Court history in the modern age, and they're going to judge him. I think the GOP, I think the scales fell from their eyes, and I think we're going to see a new GOP evolve from. that, you know, Rip Van Winkle coming out of the cave. I've had the opportunity to travel to several Trump rallies the past couple of weeks.

Oh, wow. I can tell you firsthand that people are fired up. They are upset about what happened to now Justice Kavanaugh. And something else that's been in the news a lot. And you write about in your book, you immigrated here legally. What do you make over the current battle about the caravan, birthright citizenship, and immigration in general? This is, I think there's two massive topics that we don't, we don't,

touch, you know, the third rails in D.C. One of them is the deficit in the budget. Nobody wants to seem to solve that. And the other one is 40, 40 years of a flawed immigration system. I mean, an utterly flawed immigration system. The whole concept of chain migration, the whole idea that right now, don't take my word for it, go online, look it up. There are baby factories in Florida. There are companies that simply give opportunities for people from the Middle East, from Russia or elsewhere, to come here pregnant, have their baby, and then use that baby's anchor citizenship to legalize the rest of their family's immigration to America. Does anybody really think, I don't care who you vote for, does anybody really think that's what

the founding father's meant by any amendment to the Constitution? What we're talking about today is an amendment that was designed to do what? To stop, let's get accurate, to stop Democrats denying free slaves and their children citizenship. That's the real history. Let's not try and, you know, give in to the propaganda. It has nothing to do with people who are looking for asylum from other countries. And as an immigrant, a legal immigrant to America, of people, parents who were refugees, this is personal to me. Forget that for a second.

Look at the law. In international law, if you really are persecuted and you want asylum, if you get out of the country you're persecuted in, what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to apply for asylum in the first country you land in. So what are they doing? They're walking, what, 2,000 miles, 3,000 miles to get to America? Well, what about Mexico? What about all the other countries they cross? You get out of Honduras, you get out of El Salvador.

The first country, if you really are, if you're not an economic migrant, if you're a politically persecuted one, you're supposed to stop where you are and apply for asylum status. None of them are. What does that tell you? Well, Sebastian, we know that those countries like Mexico have made overtures to try to assist them. They don't seem to want it. The caravan moves north. We're actually going to be sending a team from the Daily Signal.

Wow. Our foreign correspondent Nolan Peterson, so our listeners can stand by. Have you invited CNN or MSNBC to join you to do some journalism? Perhaps they will when we arrive. Sebastian, this was a great interview. We appreciate you being on the Daily Signal podcast. It's my pleasure. Thank you, guys.

And follow me at Seb Gawker, S-E-B. G-G-O-R-K-A. God bless. And again, the book is called Why We Fight. Thank you. We'll be right back. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? Then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Thanks again for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature some of our favorites, both on this show and in our Morning Bell email newsletter.

Ginny, what do we have this week? Well, first up, Mildred Merritt wrote in about Jared Stuttman's very popular comment. commentary titled, Americans have almost entirely forgotten their history. Mildred says, I am 80 years of age. I take the citizenship test every several years. I took it two weeks ago and aced it. My family has been here since revolutionary times. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. And Debbie Keeling writes, thank you for telling the truth of what's happening in our country and history as it really was, not how liberals want it to be. God bless you all. And finally, Linda Saroko of Tampa says, keep your real honest reporting coming. May God bless you all and thank you very

much. Love you guys. Well, thank you, Linda. We appreciate your letter. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. Send an email to letters at daily signal.com or leave a voicemail message at 202-608-6205. Did you know you can now listen to all of our events through SoundCloud or just by visiting our events page on heritage.org. You now have access to hundreds of events and compelling discussions on policy issues from your car, on the train, or the comfort of your own home. Visit heritage.org slash events for more information or search for the Heritage Foundation on SoundCloud. On Friday, some incredible jobs report numbers were released. The numbers surpass many expectations. More than 250,000 jobs were added to the economy. Wage growth is up at 3.1% the

strongest since 2009, and unemployment held steady at 3.7%, the lowest since 1969. Well, the good news didn't stop there, and Tim Desher will be here to tell us all about it in just a moment. But first, here's a clip from Fox businesses, Stuart Varney, discussing the numbers and why they remind him of Ronald Reagan's days in the White House. 250,000 new jobs in one month and wages rising at the fastest pace in years, up 3.1%. Those are very big numbers. Those numbers tell you you've got a strong economy, you've got full employment, and wages are going up. I would have thought that would play a big role in the election Tuesday, because when the economy is humming, you would think that the incumbent party, the incumbent

president, would do well on the back of that strong economy. That's 60,000 more jobs than anticipated than estimated. How do they come up with these estimates, and then why are they so wrong? I don't take part in that, okay? I don't do expectations. I don't listen to the analysts and what they're forecasting. I don't do that. Well, whoever's doing it, it's not doing a good job. No, they're not doing a good job because they're so often wrong, it's the truth. They underestimated it wildly. 250,000 new jobs. It's almost like back in the Reagan years of the early 1980s. He cut taxes, grew the economy, hundreds of thousands of new jobs a month.

Tim Decher joins us here on the Daily Signal podcast. He is a co-host of Heritage Explains. Another great podcast we encourage you to check out and subscribe to. Tim, you write a piece for the daily signal every time there's a new jobs report each month. Tell us about your analysis of this one. Well, it's just a stellar jobs report. And I want to first say that we need to do a better job of getting credit to where credit is due. And that is to American business owners and American workers. They are seeing and taking a lead from the policies coming out of Washington and they are following in-step with hiring new people, with increasing wages, and really digging in to grow this economy.

So the credit goes to them. It goes to the private sector. I'll say that. Tim, I have the chance to travel to a couple of different rallies in Ohio and in Houston. And sure, we talked about the Kavanaugh drama. We talked about immigration. But I would say nine out of ten people I spoke with said the thing that President Trump has done that's most important to them is the economy, cutting taxes and the government.

the jobs they've seen come back to their cities. And it really was cool to see how much the economy means to them. It's not always the most exciting thing to talk about with all the numbers, but it is what makes the most impact. Absolutely. The one thing that I'll say is this. We saw an increase, and it wasn't just an increase, it was a pretty big increase in the labor force participation rate. And for the listeners, I'll just say this. We need more people coming back into the labor force. We have 7.1 million open jobs in America right now. That means we need people getting off of the sidelines and coming back into the workforce. And last month, we saw over 700,000 people come back into the workforce. One, because they're seeing better jobs, and two,

they're seeing better pay and better benefits because of it. And we're going to continue to see more of this, as Stuart Varney was saying, because of strong economic. growth in policies like tax cuts, regulation reduction, and a willingness from D.C. to get out of the way. So, Tim, you're optimistic that we can continue this growth. What are the policies that either the president or Congress needs to tackle next to ensure that it happens? Well, again, we want to see this month after month. And not to say that we won't see a down month in the future. We don't know. This is this month. It was a good month. We can say that for sure. But we need to stick to what brought us here. And that is we need to double down on taxes, tax cuts. We need regulatory

reduction to continue. And most importantly, we need to abandon the idea of tariffs. We need more free trade in our economy. And if we do that, that will position us to do what really matters, which is get our fiscal house in order by putting the budget on the chopping block and cutting useless spending that is literally tying, tying our hands behind our backs. So I think that if we continue to double down on this, it's going to open up the opportunity for us to do things like get the budget in order. Well, certainly a lot of opportunities, Tim, and a lot is certainly at stake. We're going to leave it there today. We encourage you to check out Tim's work. Again, go to daily signal.com to find his latest analysis.

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