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 thing. 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, 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.

Right-wing parties are simultaneously leading polls across Europe’s biggest economies in a first for the continent’s nationalist and populist movements.

In France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, known together as Europe’s “Big Three,” right-wing parties have surged in popularity on angst over lax immigration policies and high inflation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The National Rally has led polls in France consistently for the past year, and National Rally’s presidential candidate would likely win the first round of voting. National Rally is led by Jordan Bardella, who took over the party after Marine Le Pen.

National Rally is already the largest single party in France’s National Assembly.

Reform UK, the newly founded British party led by Nigel Farage, has overtaken the ruling Labour Party in polls within the last six months. Farage founded the party partly out of frustration with the Conservative Party, which has dueled the Labour Party for control of government over the past century. Farage launched Reform after accusing Conservatives of abandoning their voters.

In Germany, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has edged ahead of the ruling centrist Christian Democratic Union.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have, like the rest of Europe, gone through a period of high inflation after pandemic-era spending binges led to aggressively rising prices that have left many goods much at much higher price points than they were five years ago. Europe has also lagged behind the United States in economic growth that could offset the impact of those higher prices.

The governments of the Big Three have also faced increasing grassroots pressure over permissive immigration policies.

In France, citizens have reacted against the country’s growing Muslim population which many see as a threat to French values. The slogan “Let’s block everything” has grown popular on social media in France in reaction to unsustainable spending, in part on immigration that has little direct benefit for French citizens, that has led to austerity measures.

In Germany and the United Kingdom, both countries have experienced record waves of immigration in recent years. Germany’s foreign-born population has surged from 15% of its total population in 2017 to 22% last year.

The United Kingdom has seen raw immigration numbers comparable to the surge that swamped the United States immigration system under Biden within the same time frame. Unlike the United States, however, the United Kingdom’s population is about a fifth the size of the United States’.

Europe’s immigration policies have received attention and criticism from the United States, from high-profile figures such as Elon Musk to top officials in the White House.

“[G]overnment that puts foreigners above their own people is, by definition, TREASONOUS and ILLEGITIMATE!” Musk posted on X on Sunday. “The people of Britain deserve a government that represents their interests, not those of shadowy foreign organizations!”

Musk has also voiced support for AfD in Germany, while the Trump administration has criticized European officials for restricting free speech across the continent, often to avoid upsetting foreign populations that have swelled within its borders such as in Germany and the U.K.