White House Deputy Assistant Sebastian Gorka sparred with CNN anchor Brianna Keilar on Sunday during State of the Union, rejecting the network’s statistics on school shootings and accusing CNN of “distorting the facts.”
The exchange came as the two discussed last week’s deadly shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, in which the attacker was a transgender-identifying man.
“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
Keilar Accuses Gorka of “Missing the Bigger Picture”
Keilar argued that focusing on the shooter’s gender identity obscured broader trends in mass violence.
“You know, 96% of attackers … were non-trans men,” Keilar said, citing data from the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center.
“So I know you’re focusing on this shooter being trans … but are you missing the bigger picture here when you zero in on that instead of more broadly these school shooters as an epidemic?”
Gorka Pushes Back
Gorka countered that the dataset Keilar used included gang violence and suicides, which he said distorted the picture.
“You are using data based upon the predominant gun violence – which is gang-on-gang violence with zero ideological content,” Gorka said. “So let’s concentrate on mass shootings at schools — specifically Christian or Catholic schools. Then the data set is wholly different.”
He added: “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.”
Clash Over Statistics
Keilar insisted that only three of the last 32 school shooters identified as transgender. Gorka dismissed her numbers.
“Forgive me if I don’t go with CNN stats,” he replied. “CNN has proven itself to be wholly inaccurate … 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.”
When Keilar pressed that it was “simple math,” Gorka fired back: “No, it’s not, it’s distortions! … In just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature, or who are confused in their gender.”
Gorka’s Broader Concern
Gorka said his primary concern was how often school shooters are already “known” to law enforcement and whether authorities miss warning signs before such attacks.
The tense exchange underscored sharp partisan divides over how to interpret the role of ideology, identity, and law enforcement failures in the ongoing debate about school shootings.
