The firebrand former Trump aide’s Fox appearances highlight the rift between Fox’s unabashed pro-Trump opinion programming and its hard-news division.
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It wasn’t always like this. For instance, in June 2016, months before he entered the White House and then emerged as a prominent MAGA spokesman, Gorka appeared for a hard-news segment hosted by Fox News’ Bret Baier—often cited as an actually “fair and balanced” anchor on the conservative media behemoth—to discuss the Pulse nightclub massacre.
And, according to several people with knowledge of the matter, the newfound unofficial “ban” is no accident—and it’s not because Sean Hannity or other opinion hosts have dibs on Gorka.
Fox’s news division simply does not view Gorka as credible enough to regularly comment on subjects on which Gorka has branded himself a longtime expert, or to analyze the administration of which he was a member.
One Fox News producer in the news division told The Daily Beast that their show avoided booking Gorka because he was essentially “useless” to them, and could offer nothing more than his typically unabashed, unconditional cheerleading for Trump.
Another staffer working on a hard-news show bluntly stated that “we will take other counterterrorism experts. We will not take Seb. Ever.”
As the Fox staffer explained, the reason for this is a general opinion within the news division and among reporting staff that Gorka is a “clown” and not an “objective” commentator on national security issues. (Gorka is often tagged by his critics as an academic fraud and an anti-Muslim zealot posing as an expert on radical Islam and foreign policy.)
Fox News did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Gorka, however, was slightly more forthcoming.
“Seriously? You are such a loser. Get a life,” Gorka emailed a Daily Beast reporter, replying to a question about why he wasn’t appearing on certain programs lately.
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Fox News’ “hard news” shows—which pride themselves on being at least somewhat distinct from Fox’s pro-Trump agitprop apparatus—want nothing to do with former White House official Sebastian Gorka, multiple sources told The Daily Beast https://t.co/4dCri31gmj
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) August 6, 2018
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