Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka are in the running to be President-elect Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser, according to three people familiar with the competition who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.
With either selection Trump would elevate a firebrand loyalist who served in the incoming commander-in-chief’s first administration to one of the White House’s top roles.
Trump has already selected Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida to serve as his national security adviser. Neither role requires Senate confirmation, but Anton and Gorka would both be controversial picks that are likely to stir anger in Washington. It would be a sign of the second Trump administration pushing a combative tone on foreign policy.
One of the people familiar with the transition said that Anton was the more likely of the two men to win the job.
Anton, who worked as a speechwriter for high-profile clients like Rupert Murdoch, Rudy Giuliani and Condoleezza Rice before joining the Trump administration in 2017 as deputy assistant to the president for strategic communications, has pushed anti-Islamic views, criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and peddled conspiracy theories, penning an essay before the 2020 election suggesting that billionaire George Soros and the Democratic Party were planning a coup.
Gorka, an ally of Steve Bannon who was also named a deputy assistant to Trump in early 2017, has called violence a “fundamental” part of the Islamic faith and once worked as an advisor to Viktor Orban. He was criticized within the administration for showing up at random meetings and raising unrelated points, POLITICO has reported. Gorka’s academic credentials have raised eyebrows among scholars.
The Trump-Vance transition and Anton did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gorka declined to comment but encouraged this reporter to “take a long jump off a short pier.”
