As If This News Cycle Could Get Any Wilder, Sebastian Gorka & Mike Pompeo Are Eurotripping Together

Last we checked in with erstwhile Nazi-adjacent Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka, he was (allegedly) farting on his radio show, fresh off of an insane freakout at a journalist in the Rose Garden. Now, he’s on his way to Europe with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who it turns out—in a real twist!—was on Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Are we missing anyone at this point? What’s Boris Epshteyn up to?

Gorka, who has blocked me for some reason, tweeted on Monday evening that he was boarding Pompeo’s plane, and bound for Italy—the same place Attorney General William Barr went last week in an apparent effort to rally cooperation for a Justice Department investigation into the Mueller Report. Interesting!

Why is Gorka, whose (brief) tenure with the White House ended in August 2017, going on a State Department trip that’s probably not also a Justice Department trip, but who knows? Great question. According to NBC News reporter Josh Lederman, Gorka’s traveling as a “member of the press,” even though his qualifications include only his Salem Radio Network show, a handful of Fox News appearances, and that aforementioned Rose Garden freak out. But he was a series regular back when Trump first premiered, so it makes sense that the news cycle’s bringing him back for this particularly convoluted plot line.

Meanwhile, this is a strange time for Pompeo to skip town, considering Congress subpoenaed him on Friday—not to mention the fact that on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Pompeo was on that infamous July 25 call, even though his name was not mentioned in the initial whistleblower complaint.

Pompeo’s trip will take him to Italy, Vatican City, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Greece, according to the Italian embassy’s website. The trip does not appear to include Hungary, where Gorka is a wanted man, which is a bummer.