White House national security aide Sebastian Gorka on Tuesday scrapped with two MSNBC anchors over the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” and equated not saying it with a hospital not calling a cancer patient’s diagnosis “cancer.”
The Trump administration has generally emphasized “radical Islam” when speaking of terrorism, a specification the Obama administration did not typically use. MSNBC’s Ali Velshi questioned how using the phrase would have stopped terrorist attacks in Paris, Belgium, or London.
“If you, God forbid, caught cancer, and the hospital was forbidden from calling it cancer and said, ‘you have the flu, go home and hydrate and some take aspirins,’ would you actually have the right treatment?” Gorka said.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle replied, “No, but there’s still no cure for cancer.”
“Have you not heard of chemo?” Gorka retorted.
“I have heard of chemo, and cancer can still kill you, so it doesn’t matter what you call it,” Ruhle said.
“Doesn’t matter what you call it, really? So if I call it the flu, and say go home and take some aspirin, what’s going to happen?” Gorka said.
Velshi pressed Gorka for another answer.
“I gave you a very simple answer,” Gorka responded. “If you misdiagnose anything, whether it’s a serious disease or international geopolitical threat, you will never solve it.”
