Sebastian Gorka defended President Donald Trump’s response to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
His comments came in a column posted by The Hill on Wednesday.
“What happened to the Saudi national at the Saudi consulate in Turkey is wrong,” said Gorka, the former White House deputy assistant. “But our national response to his death cannot be allowed to jeopardize the precarious balance in the Middle East and endanger our regional and global interests, our safety or the security of our allies.”
And he said when Trump took office the president “put our enemies on notice and reasserted American leadership around the world.”
“Our work in bringing old enemies together eventually would bear fruit publicly as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the effective ruler of the kingdom, gave an interview in which he recognized Israel's right to exist in peace,” he said..
But Gorka noted as a result of Khashoggi’s death, there are calls to have the crown prince removed and for the U.S. to impose “massive retaliatory measures.”
“This, at exactly the time when things finally have started to move in the right direction in the Middle East, with ISIS on the run, a new Sunni coalition of states including Saudi Arabia and Egypt back on our side, and Iran increasingly contained,” he said.
Gorka added: “America is back. And she will stand by her friends.”
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