‘I’m Going to Stick with the Facts, Not CNN’s Pseudo-Facts’: Gorka Battles Keilar over Transgender-Mass Shooting Connection

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” White House senior director for counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka argued with host Brianna Keilar over mass shootings committed by transgender people.

Partial transcript as follows:

GORKA: As you mentioned at the top of your monologue, we have the videos, we have the statements from the dead shooter that were clearly anti-Christian. Just as with the transgender attack on the Nashville Christian school in which more children were killed, there is an ideological connection to multiple of these attacks, where innocent children, especially Christians and Catholics, are targeted and that is very, very disturbing.

KEILAR: You have focused very much on the shooter being trans, and I do want to speak with you about that. But while I respect that you cannot reveal specifics about what the parents may be saying, can you characterize whether what they’re saying is helpful?

GORKA: No, I cannot do that. That would be utterly inappropriate from a policy position in the White House. We leave that to the local police authorities and to the FBI.

KEILAR: OK, so let me ask you about this. You know, 96 percent of attackers in — when you’re looking at the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, looking at 172 mass attacks in the U.S. between 2016 and 2020, 96 percent were non- trans men. So I know you’re focusing on the 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?