While defending Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman during an appearance on CSPAN’s “Washington Journal” against claims from a caller who compared his actions to those of Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro, former White House aide Sebastian Gorka claimed that the Washington Post journalist murdered by Saudi Arabia was an “apologist for jihadists.”
“At the end of the day, it’s not what the Washington Post or the fake news industrial complex would have you believe,” Gorka said Sunday, after he was asked if the murder of Jamal Khashoggi put the U.S. in a difficult position. “This man Khashoggi was an apologist for jihadists. He was an apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood. He wasn’t an American journalist. he was murdered and that was wrong, but that event occurred on foreign soil, we need to get to the bottom of it and we need to have transparency, but at the the of the day, the idea that he was some champion for democracy — he was an apologist to the kinds of the people who are in bed with groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda.”
The view is hardly surprising coming from Gorka, whose far-right opinions landed him a spot in the Trump administration.
Khashoggi was tortured, murdered and dismembered by Saudi officials inside the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey in October. The crown prince has maintained that he was not aware of plans by top Saudi officials to murder Khashoggi, a well-known dissident of the Saudi kingdom and President Trump has bear hugged bin Salman’s denials.
