White House senior aide Sebastian Gorka came out swinging Wednesday night in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper. Gorka started out by denying CNN's descriptions of a "crisis" and "a bunker mentality" in the White House following the release of Donald Trump Jr.'s emails confirming he'd met with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the presidential election in the hopes of securing compromising information about Hillary Clinton. "I actually work in the West Wing. I work in the White House. It is absolutely nothing of the kind," Gorka said.
Gorka then switched to offense, laying into CNN for pushing "fake news." "I'm sad to see CNN fall to this. I know you want salacious, sensational coverage for your ratings so your corporate sponsors and owners will have more money but that's not media. That's not reportage. It's just fake news," Gorka said.
Cooper refused to bite. "I'm just going to ignore the insults because I don't think it really gets us anywhere," Cooper said. He then turned back to the news, asking about President Trump's tweet claiming that when the "Fake Media" uses anonymous sources, "often times those sources are made up." Cooper asked whether that still stood, considering Trump's son recently verified anonymously sourced reporting when he published his own emails.
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But Gorka wasn't done attacking CNN, bringing up a correction the network once had to make. Cooper agreed CNN's "reporting was wrong" and noted it was corrected, before trying once again to get back to the topic of Trump Jr.'s emails and the president's recent Twitter attack on anonymous sources.
Gorka responded by lauding Trump Jr.'s "transparency" and slamming the "fake news industrial complex" for giving the Russia story "legs."
Watch the exchange below. Becca Stanek
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