A string of recent dismissals at the White House involving national security staff will not extend to include Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to President Trump, according to a report Thursday.
Gorka, a combative former editor at Breitbart News who focuses on counterterrorism issues, has long been a target of Democrats and others, because of alleged anti-Muslim comments he’s made and his alleged ties to a Hungarian political party connected to Nazism.
The Daily Beast says Gorka is safe from a new sweep of national security officials at the White House because he reports to Trump instead of national security adviser H.R. McMaster.
Trump also reportedly likes Gorka’s pugnacious performances on cable television, and says he’s popular with the president’s base.
The NSC has faced upheaval in recent weeks involving officials with ties to former national security adviser Mike Flynn, who was ousted in February after it was revealed he misled the administration about his communications with a Russian envoy.
The White House confirmed on Wednesday that Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence programs, left the NSC.
McMaster reportedly tried to dismiss Cohen-Watnick in March, but Trump blocked the firing after Steve Bannon, White House chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, advocated for Cohen-Watnick to remain.
Before joining the NSC, Cohen-Watnick, 31, was a little-known figure at the Defense Intelligence Agency where he worked with Mike Flynn.
McMaster last week fired Derek Harvey, an Iran hawk and Flynn holdover who was Trump’s top Middle East adviser on the NSC.
The Atlantic reported Wednesday that another NSC official was quietly fired last month. Rich Higgins, a former Pentagon official who served in the NSC’s strategic-planning office as a director for strategic planning, was dismissed after arguing in an unusual memo that Trump is under attack from “the deep state,” and other forces from inside and outside government.
