Adviser won’t say if Trump believes Islam is a religion

by Rebecca Savransky - 03/01/17 1:57 PM ET

A deputy assistant to President Trump on Wednesday dodged a question about whether the president believes Islam is a religion.

“This is not a theological seminary. This is the White House, and we’re not going to get into theological debates,” Sebastian Gorka said in an interview on NPR when asked whether the president believes Islam is a religion.

“If the president has a certain attitude to a certain religion, that’s something you can ask him. But we’re talking about national security and the totalitarian ideologies that drive the groups that threaten America.”

When asked if Islam is the enemy, Gorka said “of course” it isn’t.

“That would be asinine,” he said.

{mosads}“As I’ve written in my book, this isn’t a war with Islam. This is a war in Islam, as the king of Jordan, King Abdullah, as the president of the most populous Arab nation in the world … has stated.”

Gorka also addressed the president’s use of the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”

“We’re not wavering on this one,” he said during the interview.

“Those are the clearest three words of his speech. The enemy is radical Islamic terrorism and that has not changed and it will not change.”

When asked a question about what the administration is doing to focus on people radicalized in the United States, Gorka said the administration would not “listen to so-called terrorism experts who are linked in any way to the last eight years of disastrous counterterrorism.”

“We’re going to take a new approach,” he said. “We have a new president.”

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