Bill Mitchell is living his best life.
Last week, the president of the United States retweeted him twice and on Thursday he interviewed Sebastian Gorka, the deputy assistant to President Trump, for his program YourVoice Radio.
Mitchell has gained traction as one of Trump’s biggest and most appreciated cheerleaders who finds inventive ways to praise the president even as he has experienced early failures. As one of the more fringe elements in the Trump administration, Gorka appearing on the webcast shows a desire to rejuvenate the administration’s relationship to its fervent, far-right base.
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The two men swapped niceties for the full fourteen minutes of the Periscoped interview. The interview was less an exploration of Gorka’s fringe beliefs and practices and more of a verbal lovefest between the two men. At times, Mitchell also turned poetic.
“I’ve always felt that the world functions best when the United States is a lighthouse on the hill and all the other countries are out there on the stormy sea but they can always look to us on how to get to safe port,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell’s first substantive question was about whether President Trump could eliminate ISIS within the first four years of his administration.
Gorka, speaking in his characteristic deep rumble, said of course, citing Trump’s previous remarks at his address to Congress and his speech at CPAC.
“This isn’t stump speech rhetoric, this is what the president, the commander-in-chief, intends to do and will do,” Gorka said as Mitchell smiled behind a text in the bottom right corner of the screen reminding viewers that the Free Beacon deemed Mitchell “The New Nate Silver” last year.
“ISIS is just the latest iteration—it’s just a bunch of ragtag individuals that we will be able, with our marines with our local partners, to destroy,” Gorka continued.
Mitchell said Trump would deal with ISIS forcefully, since Trump “finishes things,” citing his experience in real estate.
About halfway through the interview, Gorka, who has been alleged to have ties to a Nazi-linked Hungarian group (which he fervently denies), took the time to praise Mitchell and his audience for their assistance in elevating Trump.
“Can I just share with your audience something?” Gorka asked. “Your audience is so important because of the role you played as a one-man army on the outside, supporting the values of the campaign and administration. So I personally am really grateful for what you’ve done. It’s stunning to see what you’ve built.”
Mitchell has built something of a following—over 200,000 Twitter followers to be exact—since his tweets about Trump’s chances of winning the election went from being viewed as laughable to brilliantly prognosticative.
His status has earned him enough favor to ply people like Gorka away from their White House jobs to appear on his show and talk about how Trump is imbued with a “genetic patriotism.”
“Just an absolute molecular level love of America,” Gorka described the sentiments of his boss.
Gorka had to depart after about 14 minutes because, as Mitchell told The Daily Beast, he had a meeting.
But the brief time was appreciated nonetheless.
“Regarding the ‘one man army’ comment,” Mitchell said referring to Gorka’s remark in a direct Twitter message to The Daily Beast. “I believe he was referring to my bold stand against the polling and media presumption that he could not win. While I held a leadership role, this victory had many leaders, each doing what they do best.”
“#TrumpTrain is a team concept. :-)” Mitchell concluded.
