WATCH: Sebastian Gorka Clashes With CNN Over Trans Shooter

While appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” White House senior director for counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka clashed with host Brianna Keilar in a heated discussion on mass shootings committed by transgender individuals.

“As you mentioned at the top of your monologue, we have the videos, we have the statements from the dead shooter that were clearly anti-Christian. Just as with the transgender attack on the Nashville Christian school in which more children were killed, there is an ideological connection to multiple of these attacks, where innocent children, especially Christians and Catholics, are targeted and that is very, very disturbing,” Gorka said.

Keilar went on to take issue with Gorka’s claim about trans shooters. “You know, 96 percent of attackers in — when you’re looking at the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, looking at 172 mass attacks in the U.S. between 2016 and 2020, 96 percent were non- trans men,” she said. “So I know you’re focusing on the shooter being trans. The shooter was trans, and that is certainly of note. But are you missing the bigger picture here when you zero in on that, instead of more broadly these school shooters as an epidemic, and you perhaps miss the through line that connects them all?”

Gorka responded by noting that the provided data set does not include gang crime and other shootings committed by criminals, which makes up the vast majority of gun crime. “So it’s like those who say gun violence in America causes so many deaths and then fail to note that the majority of the stats they are using refer to also suicides by gun, which, of course, is not what we are talking about here today,” he said.

“So let’s concentrate on mass shootings at schools, specifically Christian or Catholic schools. Then the data set is wholly different. So don’t conflate different data sets just to make a political point. There was an ideological content to this attack. That’s what terrorism is. It’s not because somebody didn’t get the drug deal they wanted. It is an ideological message.”

The CNN host followed up by narrowing down her data set to focus just on school shootings, claiming that in 32 incidents since 2020, three of those shootings were committed by transgender individuals. “Yes, forgive me if I don’t go with CNN’s stats, OK? CNN has proven itself to be wholly inaccurate in all kinds of things for the last 10 years,” Gorka shot back.

“Perpetrators of the Russia, Russia hoax and that we didn’t have an open border. So please forgive me if I don’t take your stats for granted.”

Keiler then appeared to edit her own stats, stating that two of 32 shootings in the data set were committed by transgender individuals before chiding Gorka for failing to understand “simple math.”

While data bases tracking mass shootings use a wide range of different criteria, the data presented by Keilar would indicate that six percent of mass shootings were committed by transgender individuals. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, trans people make up less than one percent of the U.S. population. Keilar did not note that her “simple math” means that transgender individuals are massively overrepresented in mass shootings.

The two then proceeded to clash over the number of shootings committed by transgender individuals, with Gorka citing another data set showing seven transgender shooters over the last several years. “I’m going to stick with the facts, and not CNN’s pseudo-facts,” he said.