Photo credit: The Associated Press

Days before he was selected to serve as national security advisor for the incoming Trump administration, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn appeared to walk into Trump Tower alongside Breitbart News national security editor Sebastian Gorka. Both Gorka and Flynn have made virulent and offensive anti-Muslim comments and blamed “political correctness” for terror attacks.

An Associated Press photographer captured Gorka walking by Flynn ahead of a November 14 meeting at President-elect Donald Trump’s transition headquarters in New York. On November 17, news reports indicated Flynn had been offered the position of national security advisor.

According to his biography, Gorka “is a frequent guest lecturer at institutions such as the FBI, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (Fort Bragg), is lead instructor for US Special Operations Command's Combating Terrorism course, and recently briefed the National Intelligence Council (ODNI) and the CIA.” It says he is also a regular commentator at Fox News and other networks. During the presidential election season, Federal Election Commission filings indicated that Gorka was paid by the Trump campaign for “policy consulting.”

During his media appearances, Gorka has repeatedly pushed the inflammatory conspiracy theory that President Obama is sympathetic to Islamic terrorists.

In August, Gorka appeared on Fox News to defend Trump’s claim that Obama was the “founder” of ISIS, asserting that ISIS did not exist until Obama took office in 2009 -- even though the group is a rebranded version of 12-year-old predecessor Al Qaeda in Iraq. Gorka called Trump’s false statement “absolutely right,” before claiming that actions taken during the Obama administration “were put in place … to help this former Al Qaeda franchise become a trans-regional insurgency with more than 80,000 fighters today.”

In June, after a gunman who swore allegiance to ISIS killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL, Gorka appeared on Fox News to claim the massacre “in part was facilitated by the policies of this administration, President Obama and Secretary Clinton, that have allowed political correctness into the threat assessment.”

In an April column at Breitbart News, Gorka blamed Obama for veteran suicides, writing that following World War II, veterans “didn’t eat the barrel of a 1911 [handgun]” because “their President, their commander, told them, ‘This is a war against evil, and what you are going to see may be nasty, but it’s okay, guys, you’re on the side of Right.’ We don’t say that any more.”

Gorka has also engaged in conspiratorial anti-Muslim smears, including speaking at a conference whose organizers asserted that “Islamists have been brought into the innermost circles of America’s national security institutions.” After the Washington National Cathedral hosted an event with two Muslim groups in 2014, Gorka wrote an article at Breitbart News with the headline “Muslim Brotherhood Overruns National Cathedral In DC." The piece asserted that “if a place of worship is used by Muslims for their prayers, that territory subsequently becomes part of Dar al Islam, sacred muslim (sic) land. Forever.”

Flynn, who was forced out of his position at the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 after he clashed with senior officials, is similarly fixated on the supposed link between “political correctness” and anti-terror efforts. According to The Daily Beast, “Flynn has said ‘political correctness’ has prevented the United States from confronting violent extremism, which he sees as a ‘cancerous idea that exists inside of the Islamic religion,’” and Flynn “authored a book that argued the U.S. government ‘has concealed the actions of terrorists like [Osama] bin Laden and groups like ISIS, and the role of Iran in the rise of radical Islam….'” Like Gorka, Flynn has also made public anti-Islam statements, including writing on social media, “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.”

A commentary video released by the National Rifle Association claims that “terrorists want you to elect” Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton because of her policies on immigration and guns. In fact, numerous experts agree that ISIS prefers Trump as president.

In a November 3 NRA News commentary, NRA commentator and former Navy SEAL Dom Raso claimed, “The threat this country faces is real and it will only become worse with the weakened policies Hillary plans to enact. The terrorists want you to elect her. They want weaker immigration and more gun-free zones”:

DOM RASO: I didn’t put my life on the line God knows how many times, and my brothers didn’t fight and die so a career politician, who has been defended by guns her entire life, could take that fundamental right away from everybody else. The threat this country faces is real and it will only become worse with the weakened policies Hillary plans to enact. The terrorists want you to elect her. They want weaker immigration and more gun-free zones. They want everybody to be caught off guard, just like 9/11. A plane being used as a missile was something that couldn’t happen, and it did.

Widespread reporting indicates that Trump is the candidate of choice for ISIS:

• Matt Olsen, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, wrote at Time that “interviews with ISIS members and analysis of social media” indicate the terrorist organization wants Trump to win because “Trump’s anti-Muslim proposals are likely to inspire and radicalize more violent jihadists in the U.S. and Europe.”
• Foreign Affairs: “Analysis of ISIS chatter on social media and conversations with 12 current and former supporters of the group do indicate that ISIS strongly prefers Trump over the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.”
• An ISIS defector told Talking Points Memo that ISIS prefers Trump because he is the “perfect enemy.” TPM quoted a counterterrorism analyst who said, “It’s clear they find his comments, they find his demeanor, they find his approach, in some way serving the goals of ISIS in some manner, whether it be in having a ground war in Syria or weakening the United States."
• Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism expert who served in Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, wrote that “for ISIS, the election of Trump would help them to validate the group’s contention that the U.S. is at war with Islam. That narrative has been a powerful tool for ISIS in recruiting people to join its ranks and commit terrorist attacks.”

The NRA’s claim about Clinton’s position on “gun-free zones” is equally unfounded.

There is no evidence that places that do not allow guns are more dangerous than places that do, or that mass killers choose their targets depending on whether guns can be carried. Mother Jones reported that a new study from Johns Hopkins University found “From 1966 to 2015, only 12 percent of 111 high-fatality mass shootings in the United States -- at college campuses or elsewhere -- took place in ‘gun free’ zones, and only 5 percent took place in ‘gun restricted’ zones, where security guards were armed but civilians were banned from carrying weapons.” The study also found that civilians carrying concealed weapons have not been an effective deterrent in stopping mass shootings.

Terrorists, however, have called on supporters to exploit loopholes in weak U.S. gun laws to obtain firearms. In a 2011 video, American-born al-Qaeda propagandist Adam Gadahn urged al-Qaeda's followers to go to gun shows in order to buy guns without undergoing a background check, asking his audience, "So what are you waiting for?" The NRA staunchly opposes closing loopholes that allow firearms to be purchased without background checks.

That hypothetical was described in an October 18 NRA Commentator video, with NRA News commentator Dom Raso saying he was going to “think like ISIS” before suggesting that the terror group could take down the United States’ entire power grid.

According to Raso, as time passes after the power goes out, “food and water would be almost impossible to find and whatever stockpiles were left would become war zone. … I guarantee police would abandon their duty, to protect their own families. … Sewage would pile up in homes and run out into the streets. There would be no safe water for showers, and disease would inevitably start to spread. With their ruthless methods and superior organization, Mexican cartels and urban street gangs take advantage of everyone and take control.”

Raso then said, “At this point, ISIS doesn’t have to kill anyone; they’ve already won”:

In an October 11 video, Raso described another doomsday scenario, pre-emptively blaming President Obama for ISIS setting off a hypothetical nuclear device in Times Square. In this scenario, ISIS would smuggle the nuclear device across the U.S.-Mexico border.

While showing images of Obama, Raso intoned, “If, God forbid, a massive attack is carried out on our own soil by terrorists who gained entry by crossing that border, it will be exactly because we decided to put the feelings and opinions of those politicians whose closest interaction with ISIS is watching the Paris attacks happen on CNN over the safety of the American people”:

In an October 4 video, Raso claimed that Obama “talks about universal values we all share as if Islamic terrorists are just like us,” before predicting an ISIS terror attack against a school in the U.S. similar to the 2004 Beslan, Russia, hostage crisis that left hundreds dead.

Without mentioning Trump by name, the video demanded that we elect federal leaders who will say “radical Islamic terror.”

The NRA video is graphic and includes footage of dead and wounded children:

The NRA most recently amped up its fearmongering with an “urgent message” to members from the group’s leader, Wayne LaPierre, in which he described the U.S. as an unlivable hellscape following eight years of Obama as president.

Before the 2014 elections, the NRA’s election edition of its magazine fearmongered about terrorist attacks and "angry mobs" rioting "just for the sheer hell of it" in the U.S. before calling on supporters to "vote our guns" on Election Day. That magazine cover suggested that ISIS is at “our door”: