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Steve Inskeep tried mightily again to get an answer to the question, "Does Donald Trump believe Islam is a religion?" when Sebastian Gorka, the deputy assistant to the president, 

In the earlier interview, Gorka told Inskeep he didn't know President Trump's opinion on Islam as a religion and so on Wednesday he asked him if he'd found out yet.

"It would be nice if you actually reported things accurately," Gorka responded. "I didn't say I would refuse to do anything of the sort. This is not a theological seminary. This is the White House. And we're not going to get into theological debates. 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."

Inskeep persisted, asking if a war on radical Islam is a war on Islam.

"Well, of course it isn't," Gorka replied. "That would be asinine. 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, President Sisi, has stated, this is a war for the heart of Islam. Which version is going to win, an atavistic, 7th century, blood curdled version such as propagated by al-Qaida and ISIS or whether it's going to be the one that is our allies' version, the Jordanian, Egyptian the Emirates?"

Which led into yesterday's controversy about whether the White House thinks Jews have been committing attacks against their own synagogues and cemeteries and Jewish Community Centers -- so called "false flag operations."

Gorka dismissed the assertion, then lent it credibility.

"But if you deny the fact that we have found individuals red-handed across college campuses and elsewhere manufacturing fake graffiti attacks or threats of attacks have been found out to be simply doing so because they don't like President Trump and his administration. Both things can exist at the same time, Steve. And that's the reality," he said.

Gorka didn't say because Inskeep didn't ask.

"In this wave of anti-Semitic threats to 90 Jewish Community Centers and Jewish day schools across the country, there is no credible evidence that such a false claim exists," 

 writes this afternoon. "Much like with the question of Islam’s place in the theological discourse, Inskeep allowed the idea of a faked threat to stand, normalizing what was once a fringe idea in American society."

"The fact that Inskeep feels the need to keep asking about Trump’s view of Islam is in and of itself a form of normalizing rhetoric that has only recently come into the mainstream," she said.

Jesse Singal, writing on New York Magazine's

, says there was another "striking moment' with a key piece of information on fighting terrorism by the new administration.

 says "the swamp" has put a target on Gorka's back for naming radical Islam.

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

Steve Inskeep tried mightily again to get an answer to the question, 'Does Donald Trump believe Islam is a religion?' when Sebastian Gorka, the deputy assistant to the president appeared on NPR's Morning Edition for the second time in a month and got the question again.

On Steve Inskeep’s interview with Sebastian Gorka

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