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White House Adviser Sebastian Gorka defended the Trump administration’s use of the phrase, “radical Islamic terrorism,” in an appearance on MSNBC on Tuesday, tearing apart hosts Ali Velshi’s and Stephanie Ruhle’s criticism of the phrase.
“We will call it ‘radical Islamic terrorism,'” Gorka said. “We will target the ideology, and we will call them out for being evil.”
Velshi asked how it would help stop terror attacks if the White House called the problem “radical Islamic terrorism.”
“If you, God forbid, caught cancer, and the hospital was forbidden from calling it cancer and said, ‘You have the flu. Go home and hydrate and take some aspirins, would you actually have the right treatment?'” Gorka argued.
“No, but there’s still no cure for cancer,” Ruhle responded, smugly.
“Have you not heard of chemo?” Gorka asked, noting that would be the correct treatment for a cancer patient.
“I have heard of chemo, and cancer can still kill you. So it doesn’t matter what you call it,” Ruhle said, apparently thinking that doctors would prescribe chemotherapy for something they falsely diagnosed as a flu.
“It doesn’t matter what you call it, really? So if I call it ‘the flu’ and said, ‘Go home and take some aspirin,’ what’s going to happen to you?” Gorka responded.
Velshi then accused Gorka of not having a good answer.
“If you misdiagnose anything, whether it’s a serious disease or a serious international geopolitical threat, you will never solve it,” Gorka said.
The White House adviser then criticized the Obama administration for ascribing the problem to economic conditions and societal disenfranchisement. “It is about people having an ideology that is evil, and it has to be destroyed,” he said.