Samantha Bee reminded the "Full Frontal" audience Wednesday night that President Trump pledged to hire the best people in his administration.
Look no further than Dr. Sebastian Gorka, "one of those best people," Bee joked to lead off a piece on the shady national security adviser.
A former blogger at Breitbart, Gorka joined the administration as an Islamic terrorism expert. But scholars who have read his doctoral dissertation and have not come away impressed. The editor of International Studies Quarterly wrote:
I would not characterize it as a work of scholarship. I am confident that it would not earn him a doctorate at any reputable academic department in the United States. Indeed, it would be unacceptable as an undergraduate thesis for the Department of Government or the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. My guess is that Gorka wanted to call himself “Doctor,” and his PhD-granting institution was happy to oblige.
Bee, who read parts of Gorka's thesis, suggested that he might be exaggerating his pedigree.
"Trump's ISIS expert has never lived in a Muslim-majority country and he doesn't read or speak Arabic." Bee said. "For his thesis, Gorka read the Quran in English, and some secondary sources, and watched Charlie Wilson's War, which makes you an authority on Islam in much the way that watching a Chinese bootleg of Rogue One makes you an astronaut."
Nevertheless, Gorka's lack of scholarship didn't stop him from going on Fox News "every time they needed someone to whip up panic over Islamic jihad," Bee noted.
Gorka's anti-Islamic views is not the only philosophy he shares with Trumpism. Bee pointed out that he also shares the "alpha male" obsession that other Trump supporters openly flout. Bee played a clip of Gorka saying on Fox News, "The era of the pajama boy is over Jan. 20 and the alpha male is back."
"Gorka's menacing 4chan rhetoric would scare the crap out of me if 'Alpha Males Overtake Pajama Boy' didn't sound like the world's silliest gay porno," Bee joked.
Shares