White House Deputy Assistant Sebastian Gorka got into a heated spat with CNN anchor Brianna Keilar on Sunday’s broadcast of “State of the Union,” telling her that he did not trust her network to provide accurate information.
The two were discussing the tragic school shooting that took place at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis several days prior, and Keilar accused him of “missing the bigger picture” when he focused on the fact that the shooter was a trans-identifying man.
WATCH:
“We can’t stick with your facts because they’re not accurate.”@brikeilarcnn spars with @SebGorka over the Trump administration’s false claims about the prevalence of mass shootings committed by transgender people. pic.twitter.com/di0OjEA9hL
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) August 31, 2025
“You know, 96% of attackers — when you’re looking at the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, looking at 172 mass attacks in the US between 2016 and 2020 — 96% were non-trans men. So I know you’re focusing on this shooter being trans,” Keilar said. “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 pushed back, arguing that the data set Keilar was pulling from included gang violence and other shootings that did not appear to be ideologically motivated at all.
“Well, no, because your facts obfuscate two things. You are using data based upon the predominant gun violence – which is gang-on-gang violence with zero ideological content. If you remove all of that, the gang violence on the streets of Chicago, LA, Detroit, then you come down to a much smaller data set,” he said. “So it’s like those who say, you know, 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. 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,” he continued.
Keilar narrowed her data down to just school shootings and said that by her count, only three of the last 32 school shooters had identified as trans — but Gorka was not convinced.
“Yeah, forgive me if I don’t go with CNN stats, OK? CNN has proven itself to be wholly inaccurate in all kinds of things for the last 10 years — perpetrators of the Russia hoax, and that we didn’t have an open border. So please forgive me if I didn’t take your stats for granted,” he shot back.
Keilar pushed again: “It’s simple math.”
“No, it’s not, it’s distortions! You are distorting the facts!” he protested. “Let me be clear. In just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature, or who are confused in their gender, seven in just the last couple of years! …I’m going to stick with the facts and not CNN’s pseudo facts.”
Keilar contested that as well, claiming that of the seven Gorka mentioned, at least one had “used anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.”
Gorka went on to say that he was most concerned with how often school shooters are “known” to law enforcement and whether or not potential red flags and warning signs are being ignored.
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