Donald Trump's top counterterrorism chief has placed Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes within the crosshairs of the administration's new domestic security framework, according to reporting published on 13 May 2026 by journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Sebastian Gorka, the White House's Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism, made the remarks during an appearance on The Alex Marlow Show, a programme hosted by Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, singling both men out as figures who may not qualify for conservative movement protections under the administration's new National Counterterrorism Strategy.
Both Carlson and Fuentes had recently broken with Trump over the US war on Iran, which Carlson publicly described as 'the single biggest mistake' of any American president in his lifetime. The disclosure adds a new dimension to a domestic security architecture that critics argue is built not to neutralise genuine threats but to silence political dissent.
Gorka Names Two Right-Wing Critics During Breitbart Interview
When Marlow asked directly whether right-wing terror or extremism warranted concern, Gorka's response pointed not at any organised violence but at two media figures who had challenged Trump on Iran.
Gorka said: 'I'm not sure that Nick Fuentes or Tucker Carlson are conservatives. If you are lauding Sharia law, if you are saying that there are Muslim states that seem to be better qualitatively than America in terms of freedom and prosperity, I'm not sure that means you're part of the conservative movement. So if you remove those individuals and you understand that they're not conservatives, what's left?'
White House counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka, says: "I'm not sure that Nick Fuentes or Tucker Carlson are conservatives. If you are lauding a Sharia law, if you are saying that there are Muslim states that seem to be better qualitatively than America in terms of freedom and… pic.twitter.com/XYYAYsA5Yh
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) May 13, 2026
The 'Sharia law' charge against Carlson is drawn from an interview in which the former Fox News host described the social atmosphere he encountered while visiting Gulf states. Carlson recounted sitting at dinner in Riyadh and being received warmly as a Christian, noting that Saudi Arabia is governed by Sharia whilst observing that its residents still found his faith admirable. Klippenstein reviewed the original interview and assessed Gorka's characterisation of those remarks as 'to put it lightly, ridiculous.'
Carlson had been blunter still in public. In an April 2026 BBC interview, he said Trump went to war with Iran 'at the behest and then the demand of Israel,' called the strikes 'reprehensible and immoral,' and insisted the conflict 'doesn't serve American interests in any conceivable way.' Fuentes took to social media after Trump ordered strikes, posting: 'NO WAR WITH IRAN. ISRAEL IS DRAGGING US INTO WAR. AMERICA FIRST.' Klippenstein argues that those statements of opposition, not any extremist ideology, are the real provocation Gorka is responding to.
The Pre-Crime Architecture Behind the National Counterterrorism Strategy
Gorka's comments did not arise independently. On 6 May 2026, Klippenstein reported on the White House's newly released National Counterterrorism Strategy, the first of its kind since the Biden administration's 2021 document.
In all my years covering this stuff, I have NEVER seen Americans so explicitly labeled terrorists like they are in the newly released national counterterrorism strategy 👇https://t.co/OBCH8CB5bS pic.twitter.com/K1Y5Q9IdgT
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) May 6, 2026
The Strategy, which Gorka has called 'my life's work,' formally lists 'Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists' as one of three primary terror categories, placing them alongside narcoterrorists and legacy Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The document's stated goal is to 'identify terror actors and plots before they happen' and to use 'law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent.' That language describes what civil libertarians call pre-crime policing: building investigations against individuals based on anticipated conduct, often rooted in ideology or speech rather than criminal acts.
The Strategy is built on National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which Trump signed in September 2025 and which lists 'anti-Americanism,' 'anti-capitalism,' and 'anti-Christianity' among indicators that can trigger counterterrorism scrutiny. The document instructs the Justice Department, the FBI, and a retooled network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to disrupt individuals and groups espousing such views 'before they result in violent political acts.' The full directive was published on the White House website.
Defining Dissent Out of the Conservative Movement
Klippenstein identifies a deliberate two-step in how the administration handles right-wing critics. Because the Strategy was publicly framed as targeting left-wing threats, applying it to conservatives requires a preliminary manoeuvre: stripping the critic of their conservative identity first. Gorka's assertion that Carlson and Fuentes are not 'true' conservatives achieves precisely that, paving the way for their behaviour to be reframed as foreign-adjacent extremism rather than domestic political opposition.
Trump had already begun that process publicly. After Carlson's Iran war criticism intensified, Trump posted that Carlson was 'a broken man' whose 'views are the opposite of MAGA.' He described Carlson and other critics as 'low IQ' and irrelevant. Gorka's Breitbart remarks translated that political grievance into the language of national security.
In a separate interview with actor-turned-commentator Dean Caine, Gorka boasted that mainstream media had failed to scrutinise the Strategy. 'We are moving so fast, they just can't keep up with us,' he said, calling the lack of negative coverage 'delicious.' The Strategy's foreword, signed by Trump, states that its counterterrorism powers 'will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us' - a pledge that Klippenstein argues is contradicted by the document's own operational text.
The administration has not issued a formal response to Klippenstein's account of Gorka's remarks.
