Rose Garden Chaos

Sebastian Gorka 

A handful of conservative personalities who attended President Trump's social media summit on Thursday clashed with reporters in the Rose Garden after they were invited to sit in on an announcement about the census, reports The Hill.

The scene played out as Trump stood between Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and a number of far-right social media personalities and attendees criticized for having promoted conspiracy theories sat in the audience. The mood quickly turned confrontational after the president returned inside.

Sebastian Gorka, a former White House adviser, stormed over to engage with Playboy correspondent Brian Karem at the conclusion of Trump's remarks, where the president announced he would drop his bid to add a citizenship question to the census.

GRAPHIC LANGUAGE WARNING - Former White House aide Sebastian Gorka gets in tiff with media, accusing journalist of 'threatening' him in the Rose Garden, after Trump drops census citizenship question at a news conference pic.twitter.com/91zNJD8gkj

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) July 11, 2019

As reporters and other social media summit guests looked on, Gorka called Karem a "punk" and accused the journalist of threatening him as the two exchanged words. Fellow conservative personalities broke into a chant of "Gorka!" as they filmed the encounter.

Gorka later spoke to reporters nearby and was asked why he blocks so many people on Twitter.

After the @POTUS statement, I queried @SebGorka (former deputy assistant to @POTUS) in the @WhiteHouse Rose Garden about why he blocks so many journalists (including me) on Twitter, despite insisting that people on social media shouldn't be blocked. Here's what happened. pic.twitter.com/ujpztNDncb

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) July 11, 2019

"I block whoever I want to. I block 16,000 people," he told Steve Herman of Voice of America. "Because they’re asshats, that’s why."

A few others in the crowd heckled members of the press who stood behind a rope line at back of the Rose Garden. Trump took questions from his supporters during the social media summit, but did not respond to shouted questions from the credentialed press during the Rose Garden event.