Trump staffer puts CNN on blast after anchor questions his focus on Minneapolis shooter's trans identity

WASHINGTON, DC: White House staffer Sebastian Gorka went nuclear during an on-air clash with CNN anchor Brianna Keilar after she grilled him for “focusing” too much on the transgender identity of the Minneapolis school shooter.

The senior director for counterterrorism under President Donald Trump appeared on CNN’s 'State of the Union' on Sunday, August 31, and quickly locked horns with Keilar, who accused him of “missing the bigger picture” in the wake of the deadly attack carried out by Robin Westman, a transgender woman. 

“You know, 96% of attackers — when you’re looking at the US Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, looking at 172 mass attacks in the US between 2016 and 2020 — 96% were non-trans men,” Keilar told him.

“So I know you’re focusing on this shooter being trans. The shooter was trans — and that is certainly of note. But are you missing the bigger picture here when you zero in on that instead of more broadly these school shooters as an epidemic and you perhaps miss the through line that connects them all?” she said. 

Sebastian Gorka's counter

Sebastian Gorka wasn’t having it.

“Well, no, because your facts obfuscate two things,” he snapped. “You are using data based upon the predominant gun violence, which is gang-on-gang violence with zero ideological content. If you remove all of that, the gang violence on the streets of Chicago, LA, Detroit, then you come down to a much smaller data set."

He said the way CNN framed the issue was misleading.

"So it’s like those who say, you know, gun violence in America causes so many deaths, and then fail to note that the majority of the stats they are using refer to also suicides by gun — which, of course, is not what we are talking about here today. So let’s concentrate on mass shootings at schools — specifically Christian or Catholic schools. Then the data set is wholly different," Gorka argued.

“So don’t conflate different data sets just to make a political point. There was an ideological content to this attack. That’s what terrorism is. It’s not because somebody didn’t get the drug deal they wanted. It is an ideological message," he added.

CNN's Brianna Keilar pushes back with data

Brianna Keilar wasn’t letting him off easy. She countered with CNN’s own count tailored to his criteria.

“By CNN’s count, when you look at 32 school shootings since 2020, in which you have four or more people who have been killed — so these are the larger school shootings — only three of 32 of those shootings were committed by transgender shooters,” she said. 

But Gorka dismissed the numbers outright, taking aim at the network itself.

“Yeah, forgive me if I don’t go with CNN stats, OK?” he fired back. “CNN has proven itself to be wholly inaccurate in all kinds of things for the last 10 years — perpetrators of the Russia, Russia hoax and that we didn’t have an open border. So please forgive me if I didn’t take your stats for granted.”

“It’s simple math,” Keilar insisted.

“No, it’s not, it’s distortions!” Gorka shot back. “You are distorting the facts! Let me be clear. In just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature, or who are confused in their gender, seven in just the last couple of years! … I’m going to stick with the facts and not CNN’s pseudo facts.”

Brianna Keilar accuses Sebastian Gorka of spreading inaccurate facts

Brianna Keilar then took aim at Sebastian Gorka’s numbers, pointing to a viral list circulating among MAGA influencers on X (formerly Twitter) that claims seven recent school shooters were trans or non-binary.

“We can’t stick with your facts because they’re not accurate,” Keilar said. “In one of ones which you posted, there was no evidence that he was trans. In another, the individual is known within his family by male pronouns, he used anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.” 

The tense back-and-forth continued from there.