Seb Gorka Goes Off on Plan to Name DC Street After Khashoggi: Why Honor a Man Who Was ‘Best Friends’ With Bin Laden?

Former White House national security adviser Sebastian Gorka ripped a Washington D.C. neighborhood for its plans to honor slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Speaking with C-SPAN host Paul Orgel on Sunday, Gorka slammed the ongoing effort in the capital to rename the street in front of the Saudi Arabian consulate after Khashoggi.

“Why would you vote to name a street after a man who was best friends with Osama Bin Laden and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood?” Gorka said. “Yes, he was murdered…but this was not some saint and champion of democracy. His last article for Washington Post was about the need for theocracy and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.”

As Gorka sarcastically wondered if the streets of D.C. would eventually get renamed after Bin Laden and the top lieutenants of al-Qaeda, Orgel followed up by asking Gorka if he was pleased with how President Donald Trump handled the Khashoggi killing. Gorka said that there must be consequences for the Saudis, but the state of the U.S.-Saudi alliance can’t be upended just because “one bad individual was murdered.”

Ever since Khashoggi’s murder, critics have used his relationships to the Muslim Brotherhood and bin Laden to discredit his writings and diminish the significance of his death. Frequently, however, detractors do not go into nuance when they talk about either aspect of Khashoggi’s life.

During his early years, Khashoggi worked with members of the Muslim Brotherhood out of support for their view that Western colonialism had a lasting impact on the Arab world, which kindled corruption and autocratic governments. His colleagues at the Post have said that Khashoggi distanced himself from the Brotherhood in the 90s — becoming wary of Islamic extremists while praising democracy and freedom as antidotes for corruption.

As for the connection to bin Laden, The New York Times reported on the subject in detail — tracing back Khashoggi’s relationship with the al-Qaeda leader-to-be several decades. Khashoggi interviewed bin Laden a number of times in the 1980s, and he was sympathetic to bin Laden’s campaign against the Soviet Union during their occupation of Afghanistan.

But Khashoggi later cut ties with bin Laden as the latter increasingly embraced terrorism and jihadi violence against the West. Khashoggi condemned the 9/11 attacks, and when bin Laden died in 2011, Khashoggi lamented the person bin Laden became, saying “I collapsed crying a while ago, heartbroken for you Abu Abdullah. You were beautiful and brave in those beautiful days in Afghanistan, before you surrendered to hatred and passion.”

Watch above, via C-SPAN.

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