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Nobody ever quite knew what Sebastian Gorka’s job was at the White House. He was a former Breitbart News editor recruited to be part of the Strategic Initiatives Group, a sort of shadow National Security Council concocted by Steve Bannon. But that never went anywhere, and Gorka couldn’t get a job on the real National Security Council because he couldn’t get a security clearance. So instead he went on TV a lot. The Washington Examiner explains:

A White House source said Gorka’s role has always been unclear and said Gorka never had national security issues in his portfolio. “This guy has always been a big mystery to me,” the source said of Gorka’s contributions to the staff.

The source said Gorka’s only known duties included speaking on television about counterterrism, as well as “giving White House tours and peeling out in his Mustang,” but added that he had few notable responsibilities.

The Examiner reports that Gorka “will soon accept a position outside the White House,” which is a very Hirohito-esque way of putting it. “Gorka’s new role will deal with the ‘war of ideas’ involved in countering radical Islamic extremism, a senior administration official said, and will entail an appointment to a federal agency.” But not the State Department. Or anyplace else important, I guess.

Oh, and Gorka has lately been accused of belonging to an anti-Semitic far-right party in Hungary with Nazi roots. But I’m sure that had nothing to do with it.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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