At the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit, Sebastian Gorka, the deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, sat alongside National Review’s editor-at-large John O’Sullivan and American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Auslin to discuss the role of the U.S. in the world.
Gorka told National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, who moderated the panel, that “America First” is the “antithesis of the last eight years”; “leading from behind” simply means “following,” and “the world is safer when America is leading.” If America doesn’t uphold its position as a world leader, Gorka submitted, another nation will fill the void.
President Trump understands that we are at war with Radical Islam, Gorka explained. “He wants to win that war.”
Answering a question about the recent rise in populism, Gorka countered that we must “find a new word.” In fact, he suggested, so-called “populist” movements across the world are springing up because political elites have taken to acting as if they are more intelligent than the average voter. He pointed particularly to the consolidated political power in Brussels, which European countries are increasingly rejecting, and to elite culture here in the United States.
“The Trump Train is the reassertion of democracy,” Gorka said. Laughing, McCarthy fired back, “then the Ninth Circuit says, ‘oh yea?’” (in reference to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocking Trump’s travel-ban executive order).
