Whistleblower Exposes the Real Puppet Masters Controlling the State Department and Plans for Gaza

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Learn more at PayPal.com. So you were marched out of the State Department two weeks ago.
You left involuntarily.

And I want to hear why. But first, what did you do there? What was your job at the state? I was a press officer in the New York Eastern Affairs Bureau started September 2024.

Essentially, the main bread and butter role of a press officer is twofold. One is preparing the spokesperson before they go on the podium and do their daily press briefing.

And second, reporters ask questions all the time. So a reporter with XYZ outlet submits a question,

and it's our job to use cleared lines or cleared meaning approved lines and send them back to the reporter. And if you ever read an article and it says

a State Department spokesperson said X, those are

press officers taking those cleared lines and sharing it with that reporter.

Who clears the lines?

Good question. So, a press officer will draft the lines.

From there, it will go up a

ladder, essentially. So, there'll be desk officers,

leadership in the NEA press office itself, and then it goes up to the seventh floor, meaning the secretary's policy planning office, the deputy secretary of state's office. But it's not themselves.

Like you're not going to get the deputy secretary of state looking at this, right? It's going to just be like a staffer who represents that equity.

So it becomes

an inclusive process to make sure everyone has eyes on it. And if there are flags, they'll let you know.

For example, you could be drafting a line on Israel, but it involves Lebanon, But there's another press officer and a whole other desk and leadership working on Lebanon that might have an equity that you may not be aware of that they'll edit the line.

So describe the bureau that you work for, Near Eastern Affairs. Yes.
What is that? It's well, it's an old school name. It basically means anything involved in the Middle East.

So it's Morocco to Iran. So the whole Middle East, not just the Levant, like the whole Middle East.
Yeah. Near East.
Yeah.

They need to update the name. I think people are aware.
But yeah, it's the entire Middle East. So

they use all these acronyms. So

Israeli-Palestinian Affairs is IPA or ISPAL.

Saudi, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, that whole grouping is ARP for Arabian Peninsula. And then North Africa is its own entity as well from Morocco to Egypt.
It goes under NA.

Okay, so it's the Levant, the Gulf,

Iran,

North Africa.

Huh, interesting. And that's all in the same bureau.
So the State Department divides the

world into bureaus. Correct.
Which are often called desks. Correct.
Correct. So from Canada down to Chile's WHA, Western Hemisphere Affairs, Asia's EAP, Eastern Asia, East Asia-Pacific.

So you have all these divisions.

Europe, Africa. Correct.
EUR for Europe, Africa's AF.

I was an NEA.

and I was a press officer there, originally covering Lebanon, Jordan, just for a couple months. And I quickly shifted to Izpal.

Israel, Palestine. Israel, Palestine.
Whoa.

So that's the hottest of all desks, I would think. Yes.
Most scrutiny, most at stake, rhetoric, most closely supervised. I'm just guessing, but right.
Yes, it's true.

The press officer for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, you're on a stage constantly because you're getting the most questions from reporters for good reason.

The spokesperson is going to deal with the most questions at the podium about the topic. And so

it was a compliment, yet difficult for me to process the fact that I was requested from various people in leadership

when the

administration was changing in January.

They said, hey, I know you've only been here for a couple of months, but we're going to put you on this, in this position, which was surprising, but I wanted to take on the challenge at the time.

Really? So, you were asked to do that by the incoming administration, by the Trump administration?

It was, well, it was people from

leadership in NEA, which some of them were civil servants, but they were experienced people that recognized how heavy of a topic it was going to be coming in. Huh.
How do you get current on that?

How do you do your research? So it's multifold. So we do receive like, in terms of standard mainstream media, we do get like copies of articles and coverage.
And it's not necessarily politically

isolated. At least in the beginning, it wasn't.
So I would see everything in my email inbox. Plus, personally, right? I'm always absorbing things.

And you're only going to be a good press officer if you're reading Twitter and the standard emails you're getting through the inbox. Yeah.
So you're absorbing a lot of information.

And it's not just the details. Like, of course, if I have a question, I want to go to the Israel experts at the State Department.

So if there's a a detail I don't know, there might be a desk officer or someone like that that would know

the numbers or the challenges that I need for a specific press line. For me, though, as a press officer, my addition in those conversations is like more

stylistic. Okay, if we put this line out there, we're going to invite these problems, or it's good if we say it this way because this will help us,

it will defend us in this other way. So, it was a stylistic endeavor

from day to day.

And you don't have full control because obviously the personality of someone at the podium is going to say it one way, even though I was hoping this line would deliver this other way, right?

You don't, you don't have full control, but you do have a.

Who's the spokesman for the near East? Well, right now it's more the spokesperson of the entire department that I was briefing. So it was Tammy Bruce.
She left.

And then there's deputies that are currently. Where did Tammy Bruce go? She's going to the UN, from from my understanding.
Okay.

So were you given parameters?

Like, how do you get your orders? Like, we do say this, we don't say that. So

the main day-to-day activity that I think people may not be aware of, but are probably not aware of, is that I have these packets called press guidance called PG. So on.

Tuesday and Thursday, which are the days that a spokesperson would go on to the podium, I would have all the sample questions and some of them were tasked from the main press office in at the State Department.

But I also would come up with my own questions like, hey, we're getting this question a lot. We need to have lines for this.
We can't leave this alone.

So I'd have, I would create a packet, clear it through the building, like I was saying earlier, through the seventh floor.

And then I would present that brief to the spokesperson about two hours before she went on to the podium. How do you know what the official U.S.

position, especially on that topic israel-palestine i mean that's again

the most politicized area there is and it's the stakes are high so how do you know what the official u.s position is on that conflict uh it's a very good question and especially in the beginning of of the administration it's a bit of an art you're taking the the the gold for a press officer or lines from the principles essentially if president trump says something if special envoy wickoff says something i take those quotes and i'm like okay that's policy.

So if he's talking about.

And I think that's literally true, right? I mean, the president

sort of unilaterally conforms our formal policy.

Yeah, there's no questioning like a quote that comes for a principal, especially President Trump

or Secretary Rubio for the State Department,

is often the case. So I would take those lines and it would answer certain questions that would come up.
Where are we with the ceasefire? Oh, Special Envoy Witkoff went on XYZ Sunday show.

So I'm gonna pull that line and I'll brief the spokesperson and then she or he can quote special on the way Wickoff at the podium again because that's the policy. That's the easiest way of doing it.

You don't always have quotes. So what would happen instead is you kind of have you ever get a question on that?

Question on. Well, I mean, if you say, you know, you should respond in this way and then cite the president or Steve Witkoff or Secretary Rubio, then that kind of ends the conversation, right?

It should end the conversation.

What was surprising, and this will go back to why when I ended up departing and getting fired, getting fired in August, was that on a specific question, one of the three events I think led up to my firing

was on a Monday, we received a question about

forced displacement, which is essentially ethnic lensing, and what our policy was about Israel intending to move Palestinians in Gaza to South Sudan.

To South Sudan? Yeah, that was every two or three months. We had a new

reporting would come out. In the spring, it was they're moving

Palestinians in Gaza to Libya.

There was a rumor about Somaliland, even though we don't recognize Somaliland, but there was reporting about are we going to do an exchange where we recognize Somaliland, but they have to take on Palestinians.

And then we had an Ethiopia round. And then the last round that I witnessed before I left

was

South Sudan.

And so that appears somewhere in the press. Appears somewhere in the past.
And we received a question. What's your response to this reporting? And then

I came up with a line,

but it wasn't a line that I just came up out of the blue. It was something that President Trump and Special Envoy Witkoff had said in other words in the spring.

I said, we do not support forced displacement.

And why, what did they say about it? So that was your interpretation of what they said. Do you remember what they said, what Witkoff and Trump said on that topic?

So specifically, Special Envoy Witkoff said something, we're not, said something along the lines of we're not trying to evict anybody. Right.
So from as a press officer, there's an art to it, right?

Because you're not, you can sometimes do the exact quote, or you can just come up with a new line that reflects that quote. So we've done a lot of segments over many years attacking college.

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I think forced displacement and eviction are synonyms. Right.
Any fair person would say that.

And keep in mind, this had already been cleared. It was approved for about a couple of weeks before before this particular question popped up because the Ethiopia rumor was like July 28th.

So I put it in the PG, put it in the packet, cleared through. I briefed it multiple times.
So when that question came up, I said, I actually

probably have the right to just send that line because I cleared so many times. But to be extra careful, I sent it out to the

spokes. person and their staff and made sure the the most important equities were re-clearing it.
And

from my understanding, now I wasn't on the chain, but from my understanding, they went to the secretary's office and they cut that line of we do not support forced displacement.

The only other bullet that we have, which is

pretty standard, is we don't discuss private diplomatic conversations, which is a standard line. We always say, you know, the investigation is ongoing.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's one of those lines. They kind of pretty standard.
So

that line was there. So that's all we ended up providing uh

so there's some sensitivity which i found very odd because

out of the three events i'll i can get into the other ones but that was like number two but when the day or the two days before i was uh fired that thursday and friday the only feedback that i got because because my bureau was confused as to why uh the secretary's office was coming down on me right because they don't know me i don't interact with a random press officer at any a right maybe a little bit more because of the sensitive topic but chances are generally low my leadership said hey they're asking where you got that line from from monday i'm like today's thursday you four days later they're asking me where i where i got this line that i drafted but they cut it i went through the procedure right i cut it they cut it and i the reporter never saw that explain why they cut it no they all i got from all i heard all i all eyewitnessed was the uh acting spokesperson saying so you were um paraphrasing

the envoy, Steve Wickoff, and the president of the United States, Donald Trump, when you said the United States does not support

forced displacement. Yep.

I don't think we do support that, do we, by the way?

I would hope so. Yeah, one would hope not.
Right. And especially we're not going to pay for that.

And they cut that out, but didn't explain why. Right.
And then your supervisors came to you and said, hey, they're complaining about you, basically. Right.

And they didn't, they only specified that line, just like the act of drafting it. And I was like, I have a track record.

And they asked me Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, twice in a row, which is very odd for a random bullet. I was like,

I have the evidence from July 28th of clearing this press guidance with that line. And here are the relevant quotes.

Did anyone say, by the way, you may not know this, but the United States does support forced displacement? No one said that. No one said that.
But by the way, sorry, I got it wrong.

We're all about forced displacement. Okay.
We want it. We want, kind of want a trail of tears situation here because we're for that.
It's it's tragic because it's such a standard bonker.

Yeah, you that's something you would want to advertise, you want to put out there that we're against this. Like, hey, we still have some moral standing somewhere.

Um, and when the Washington Post piece came out, like yesterday, two days ago, saying we're there's some plan involving the consultations of Tony Blair of moving Gaussins out, and we, but we may pay for something, a piece of it.

And I'm like, why?

So, is this why I got fired?

Is it because I was still sticking through this line and they saw me as some kind of obstacle, which I wasn't, because I was going through the exact procedures they wanted.

But I knew that when I was fired as someone who was, again,

close with political appointees and with civil servants and was pretty well established in NEA, again, like I said earlier, you don't get this role covering Israeli-Palestinian affairs on a whim.

And it was suddenly pushed out. That means things are going to go into a very radical direction.

Well, yeah, I should also say, because I know that you will be attacked and I'll be attacked for speaking to you on the following grounds. This guy's a partisan Democrat who liked Bernie.

He was a saboteur, a wrecker.

I know from our conversations off camera, at least what you said to me was you basically agreed with Trump's foreign policy instincts. You know,

fewer pointless wars, like get along with more people.

Yeah, that was always, that's fair. I've always been an advocate

for ending endless war on a personal level. And so when President Trump is saying, hey, we don't want to get into any forever wars, I'm like, that's great.

And we technically started with a ceasefire in Gaza and the start of the administration. That was something

we could have expanded on. We were speaking to the Iranians.
So there's so many chances for... true peace, but things went in the wrong direction.
I would say somewhere in the summer, right?

I remember listening to President Trump's speech in Saudi in May, where he was talking about. Amazing speech.
Love that speech. I remember I was, I was like, I was cheering.
Exactly.

And in my, in my cubicle at the State Department, I was like, this is a great speech. I was too.
That was one of the best speeches ever given. And I was like, this is amazing.
It was ballsy, too. Yes.

Calling out neocons. Oh, I know.
No one calls out neocons in DC, right? Like,

we brushed that under the rug. We kept moving, right? You still see him as an analyst here and there on TV.
Here and there. They dominate the biggest cable news channel.
Yes.

Yeah. So so glad to see that.
But then why two weeks later were we sabotaging our own talks with Iran and then bombing them, right? So

the events,

like the idea that I'm some partisan is

just wrong. I yes, on a personal

avenue, I don't want any more endless wars. But President Trump was in line with that.
And I was going, I was doing my job in line with the procedures that were necessary every single day.

Yeah, but it sounds like you agreed with him. So I guess that's my point.
If you, you like that. I mean, I don't know,

you know, a lot of these, some of the labels are real, but some of them are also created and certainly sustained in order to keep people from listening to each other so they don't discover they actually agree on a lot.

Yeah. And if you love the Saudi speech and I love the Saudi speech, then we're probably not too far from each other then.
Cause I thought that, and that was a Donald Trump speech.

And by the way, if you're such a partisan Democrat, you're admitting on camera that you loved a Donald Trump speech.

You're not too partisan, I guess. But anyway, I just want to see because I'm here.
I'm honesty matters. Yeah.

It's like, it's the, it's the, it's the issues we have in foreign policy that I matter that I care about. I don't care about the labels per se.
Oh, I don't either. Well, they're clearly meaningless.

Yes. If we're both cheering on the Riyadh speech.
So, yes. Okay.
I just wanted to establish that.

So you start hearing from your bosses, like, hey, what is this thing that you put in there about opposing forced displacement?

We've always four. Yeah, four or five days earlier, not even like the next day.
There was like a delay annoyance. It was weird.
Huh.

So you said that there were three examples of this where they found problems with your work. Right.

And some of this, it kind of made sense from hindsight because I didn't like in the moment, I didn't realize. But Sunday,

Israel had

struck a tent with several journalists living inside, including Anas, who would, who millions of people had watched to cover the events in Gaza.

They all died. I drafted a line, a few lines.
And by the way, there were not

some softy lines. The only thing that was there that I didn't like was I did share condolences, which is pretty standard

policy. Condolences, what do you mean? So I said, we share condolences for the families of the killed journalists.
That's all. Well, that sounds like hate speech to me.
Yeah.

Condolences to the families of people who got killed. Yep.
Non-combatants killed in war. Yep.
Yep. And what's so disappointing, too, was that.
Wait, wait. So what?

So what happened when you put that in there? I was immediately told

from a

senior official that we don't know

what Anas did, essentially. And I was like, that's odd.
And it's what he did. Like, we don't know what his conduct was.
Like, we don't know,

we need more information.

She or he was alluding to the fact

that he may have done something or he's a he's a problematic actor in some way. But it was weird.
Okay.

Let me just say, I would be totally comfortable sharing condolences with Osama bin Laden's family. I hate Osama bin Laden.
On the other hand,

if somebody dies, it's okay to say, I'm sorry to his family that

that's what I'm saying. Yeah.
That's. immaterial.
I would say that to the family of an executed murderer in a prison. It doesn't mean I support the the murderer or the murderer, but this is family.

Like, that's okay. That's called like human decency.
And anyone who's against that.

Yeah. And it seemed that we're setting up this constant, this is, this is my issue that I noticed from the get-go, the constant deferring to Israel.

It was like waiting for some statement, like let them speak first. And then on Monday, Israel said,

all Hamas,

which is a throwaway line they've used. Al-Hamas, meaning what? Their journalists.
We're all Hamas. Yeah.
yeah or at least with on us if i remember correctly and so they brushed that away were they

look my point when i heard that was what does our intelligence say if they were like being super strict and said hey we're gonna we're gonna triple check using our u.s intelligence of who these people are maybe maybe right

uh i still don't agree with cutting the condolences line but sure but why is there oh israel said this

done we don't have intel services, right?

Right. So,

what's with the instinct to defer to Israel when we have the entire apparatus that could check that?

And then by Tuesday, we got like 17 different intelligence services in this country that take, you know, a trillion dollars a year or whatever their actual budget is. And we don't consult them at all.

We wait for the Israeli spokesman to tell us what reality is.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And how is that America first, right?

This whole apparatus of like, of, of mirroring certain Israeli statements and waiting for them to comment first

was something that I found tragic. It was, it was odd.
Um,

and

that's what ended up happening by the press briefing that Tuesday were like, we refer you to Israel, which was a line that

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So we don't have a position on it. Right.

Right. And that came up on any topic that was

somewhat sensitive or waiting for Israel to make a move. Does the State Department have any position that contradicts the position of the Israeli Israeli government that you're aware of?

No. I think

the closest, I think on for U.S. interests, we do, but in our current policy and posture, we do not.
So

the closest we can do. Do you have any siblings? I do.
Do you love them? I love them. Do you have any sticking points with them? Is there something you don't fully agree on? As any siblings do.

Exactly. Exactly.
So loving someone or having an alliance with someone or even like sharing the same parents as somebody doesn't mean that you have to agree on every little point.

It would be weird if you did. It would be weird.
Yeah. Identical twins have disagree.
This is getting a little weird.

Why is it acting like this? It's very strange.

And the closest we came

and there was no follow through

was when

I actually liked the statement. It was

a thousand other things. I had personal issues, which was irrelevant.

But Ambassador Huckabee, when there was like these, these Taiba attacks against the Christians in the West Bank, he did put out a statement saying these attacks are unacceptable.

We call on Israel to investigate. But there's no follow-through, right? What do you mean?

He had a statement that said, Oh, I remember it very well. There's no follow-up.
Yeah, there's no, there's no follow-through. And like, you're like, oh, that's a good statement.
That's, I'm like, wow.

You can't attack Christians with U.S. tax dollars.
Sorry. Yeah.
Yep. And not allowed.
Yep. I don't care who you are.
And it was, it was just, it was one statement.

And then there was no like, and if we got questions, hey, what's the status of the investigation?

We freed Israel, right? So no one at the State Department looked into it? Not that I saw.

It was a majority Christian country, but nobody felt like that would be a good use of American tax dollars to find out what this was or ask anybody any questions. And that's the thing.

Each time there's a call for an investigation, a very rare opportunity that's in front of us, there's no follow-through. You strong statement, we did the thing.

And you don't hear about it for weeks and months. So there's no one at the State Department who cared?

Look, I don't want to speak for the entire,

I think there were people that cared. I think there are people.
Well, I can't. I care.
And look,

there are civil servants or political appointees, foreign service officers that see all of this and they're concerned.

But

it's this style of constantly deferring to Israel that's at the forefront. So we can criticize, but up to a certain point.

And it's awful because

if we want

Israel to investigate, then we should be following up and asking, hey, what happened to the investigation? I thought you were going to investigate. Where are the prosecutions?

Who did all the?

Yeah. Yeah.

But

we'd never hear the follow-up. So there's no, as far as you're aware, mechanism in the State Department to, because you've described a relationship that's unique.

There's no other country in the world that has this relationship with the United States. And a lot of resources go into supporting that country.
But there's no mechanism

in the U.S. State Department to like follow up on this?

Look,

in the public realm, because I was working, I work as a press officer, right? So I'm always working with reporters and how like this, the presentation. Those things matter.

So if there was a system of following up, I didn't see it. It's possible.

Personally, I kind of doubt it.

But on the public realm, if you've followed up, you would have known about it because what if somebody asks you? Right. And you would think that if there was follow-up, you'd want to advertise it too.

Like, hey, we followed up. But they were, they were, the preference was to defer and deflect and give.

Nobody gives a shit. You persecute American, you know, Christians with American tax dollars.
Nobody cares. Yeah.
Yeah.

Sorry. You're making me mad.

No, it's just frustrating. It's frustrating.
I know. It is.
It's frustrating to see people get shat because it's not it's not a neutral situation.

Like, some people are winning and some people are losing.

And if the losers are people that you

didn't do anything wrong, the Christians aren't in Hamas. Like, what? What's their crime? Look, the scenes are horrific.
So on a human level, it shouldn't matter. But if that's...

the whole thing of having Ambassador Akubi there. It's like, at least maybe you'll care about this.
And then, yeah, you put a strong statement out, but don't follow up.

Yeah, they don't care about that. What's the point? Yeah, right.
The self-described Christians don't care at all about the Christians.

and by the way the whole justification for all this you just said it these journalists get blown up they were hamas okay end of conversation no one can plausibly claim that a christian family are in hamas okay so like what tell me it you can't claim that they're in hamas while simultaneously claiming that hamas is uh you know group of jihadis they're islamic extremists which they also claim constantly, which I don't know if that's true, by the way.

It seems more like a political organization, but whatever it is, they're telling us constantly they're al-Qaeda. So it can't also be true that Christians are a member of al-Qaeda.
Sorry. Yeah.
Yeah.

So then we know they're not in Hamas. So why did they get killed? Why was their church blown up? Why were they killed with men in hospital? Like, what is this?

And there's not one person in the State Department who cares enough to get to the bottom of that question. Yeah.

And all you saw, I mean, all I saw, President Trump did call Prime Minister Niyahu, Netanyahu.

gave an apology for the the church that was attacked in in in gaza one of many but there's there's never follow-up there's never like, hey,

this is the prosecution. This is where our investigation landed.
It's this quick two-hour brush on the rug, put a statement out, and then you don't hear anything ever again.

Yeah.

Wow. Okay.

The third example of work that you produced that your superiors were unhappy with and that led ultimately to your firing was what? So it was a Tuesday.

So that's the press guidance day of all the sample questions. It was actually arguably,

we said OBE, which meant overcome by events, which means that we're like beyond its relevancy. But like it was still could come up.

So I put it, I left it in there, was a reaction to Speaker Johnson visiting the settlements in the West Bank.

And

I had a line, pretty standard and kind of not

very specific, but it said, we support stability in the West Bank. Stability? Yeah, we support stability.
That's all.

So, and the, the last, well, the last piece was comma, um, which helps secure Israel, right?

But the, I think the stable comment was, I don't know, too much.

Because if we say we want a stable West Bank, are we accidentally being critical of something Speaker Johnson or Israel is doing, right? So what is that? I flesh that out if you don't mind. Sure.

I mean, I know what you're saying, but I'm not sure everyone knows.

Yeah, it's a good question. So why would the U.S.
government ⁇ so the U.S. government is against extending condolences to the families of non-combatants killed?

Okay.

Correct. And the U.S.
government is also now in favor of the forced movement of large populations out of the borders. Right.
Okay. And now you're saying the U.S.
government is against stability?

Right. How are we against stability? Why is stability a bad thing? Now, stability is a word that's used a lot.
And we are on paper saying we support stability in the region all the

But in this specific context, when discussing settlements, it will sound like we're critiquing Israel indirectly by saying we support stability in reaction to a question about settlements. Right.

So that was how I interpreted the issue. So, in other words, that would you might be suggesting that the U.S.
government opposes radical demographic change in the West Bank. Right.

Now, I had this line, again,

just like the forced displacement, it had cleared previously.

But this is where what was discussed when this first broke in my firing in the Washington Post was that senior officials from EBSC Jerusalem, David Milson specifically, would occasionally pop into my docs.

Now, it didn't happen every single day. Pop into your docs.
Like at a Google Doc, right?

It wasn't a Google Doc. It was a, it was, I don't know, the brand doesn't matter.
But some internal systems. Yeah, an internal system.

I would share it with in the morning, the equities I was mentioning. One of the equities is Embassy Jerusalem.
Okay, so an equity just for State Department speak. People haven't heard it.

Tell us what an equity is. So someone has some

stake in those lines. And Embassy Jerusalem does, obviously, because they're the ones that are

the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
American diplomats

posted Israel. On those press briefing days, I would share it with them for them to review.
the document and be like, okay, these are our press lines for these sample questions.

Are you okay with them? Now, it was interesting because they often did not clear, they didn't reject it, they just with a non-response because the press officers there would defer up the chain to

David Milstein and Ambassador Huckabee because they didn't want to put their name on it.

Because if this is something they didn't like, no one wants their name on a press guidance that wasn't approved by these influential people. Who is David Milstein?

He is the senior advisor to Ambassador Huckabee. And what's his, how old is he? What's his background? Is he a career diplomat?

From my understanding, he's a political. I believe he worked on the Hill.

Oh, did he work for Ted Cruz? Yes. Yes, he worked for Ted Cruz.
Okay. And he is

the stepson of your best friend, Mark Levin.

He's Mark Levin's stepson? Yeah.

He's working at the State Department. Correct.
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So David Milstein is a political guy working now for Mike Huckabee in Jerusalem, and he was going through your lines. Correct.
Okay.

Now, on paper,

he could be, but the way that he would

edit my docs as aggressively as he would, And we can get into this, but the other statements and pieces that were reported in the Washington Post, he would push a certain agenda that was very aligned with Israel that I found very problematic.

Now, in this specific example, because we're discussing the third example of why I was fired, was that he changed the stability line

to

we commend Speaker Johnson for visiting Judea and Samaria. So, we as a government's, it's like religious.

It's about Israel's land grab of the West Bank.

Are Judea and Samaria like administrative districts? No, it's not. Is there a mayor of Samaria? Nope.
It doesn't exist.

Because there's no actual place called Judea and Samaria.

Like the civil authorities don't recognize Judea or Samaria. Nope.
Okay. Nope.
It's the more extreme wing of the

elements of the Israeli government.

And

David Mielstein was in line with that language and is designed to

erase any Palestinian legitimacy that this is this is supposed to be. So the point is

by using those terms, they're biblical terms, they refer to regions described in what Christians call the Old Testament.

And the point is to remind everybody that this land was promised by God to the Jewish peoples, to the Hebrew people.

And that, you know, anyone who's lived there subsequently for the last 3,000 years has no right to it. Right.
That's the, that's, that's the point.

But I, I, but from a sort of government perspective, Judea and Samaria are not real places in that they're not

recognized. Not nation states.
They're not provinces. They're not.

And, and. Do they have clearly defined borders? Not from my understanding.
I mean, they do not. And that would increase, that would give you

more land grabs. You know, it's okay.
But if a place doesn't have a clearly defined border,

then how can the U.S. government refer to it in any kind of official capacity? They can't.
They can't.

And it's scary, too, because if you look at the airstrikes that Israel are doing, like Israel is doing in Syria, and they're building settlements even outside the Golan Heights. It's all part of this,

this,

I don't know what it is, this idea of a greater Israel that people are discussing that was beyond these borders.

So it's scary and it's against the stability of the region that we've been calling for as a government for decades.

So certainly in the modern era, or definitely since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, you know, you've had clear borders between countries.

And in fact, we're fighting a war against Russia right now on the premise that they violated those borders by moving into eastern Ukraine. So like the U.S.

government takes borders very seriously, obviously, not including our own.

But as a matter of like statecraft and diplomacy, that really, really matters.

So you would never use a phrase in an official communication that referred to a place whose territory you couldn't define. That would be

fucking crazy to do something like that. 100%.
Okay. So, you think this Milstein guy

who is Mark Levin's stepson, you say,

it's almost like you're making this up. It's like a joke, who worked for Ted Cruz in the Senate,

he added this to the statement. Correct.
And then did it go out?

So, from that point, I cut it because I even accepted most of his edits in the document because going to battle with him was a whole headache because he'll call, he'll push certain things.

He was known for doing that. Like he'll, David Mielstein phone call was not

a favorite thing for folks. What was it like? Tell us for those of us who don't work with Mark Levin's stepson at the station.
Sure, sure. So

he would call and he would just push like, why was that removed? Or why was XYZ done very often?

And if you said no, there was a tendency to go up the chain in order for him to push the agenda of any given day. And this is something that I dealt with since very early.

Where's his, okay, so is he the DCM or what's he's just a senior advisor to Ambassador Huckabee? He's like an assistant to the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Correct. And he,

sticking with the public reporting from the Washington Post, like he would push in one occasion statements that were in the voice of Secretary Rubio, not even the spokesperson.

And you drafted them, he would push them through, and be like, I want this statement out. And I want the statement out? Yeah, like he would go through and be like, I drafted this.

This is the statement I want.

I would go through the process of clearing it, but he would fight for it. Like, he'd be in the document, getting in arguments with people one by one in order to

kind of overwhelm the process and get certain

his agenda out there there the way he wanted. And it's very difficult.

On what authority? I mean, that's pretty cheeky behavior for a guy who's an aide to Mike Huckabee. He was a former cable news host.
He would call around the building and

it was very consistent.

And persistent.

But he lives in Jerusalem. He does.
What do you mean, call around?

And policy comes from D.C. Like, this is obviously they have influence and they have discussions, but the policy comes from D.C.
So if you

mean call around,

he would go either laterally or up the chain and call various people and say,

hey,

Ambassador Huckabee, you'll cite Huckabee usually and say,

wants this done or in for XYZ reason.

And

if that person didn't pick up, it'll go to the next person. So he would.
So even if I were discussing equities earlier, if one particular equity said, we can't do this,

then he would go up.

Well, I don't care because this guy above you may clear it. What?

How does he have everyone's number?

That's what I was wondering. I don't know.

But David Milstein,

an assistant in the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, I just want to restate.
I mean, grown up around this. That's not a high-level post.
He's like zero authority to do anything.

And is drafting a statement on behalf. This is very audacious to draft a statement on behalf of Secretary Rubio.
The Secretary of State. Yes, in one occasion,

again, referring just to the public reporting, was the statement

to condemn Ireland for considering

a bill that would put economic sanctions on Israel. Condemn Ireland?

As you can imagine, folks. So David Milstein was demanding, in effect, that the Secretary of State condemn Ireland

because Ireland defended the government of Israel? Yeah. Actually, if I remember correctly, strongly condemn, which doesn't really, in diplomatic speak, you don't have strongly.

But yes, strongly condemn Ireland.

As a nation?

Well,

the government, I guess.

I don't remember the language, but. Did Rubio read it?

That was a rare occasion where it went up the ladder and it was eventually

killed, but it required the European Affairs Bureau and NEA and everyone to, it took a lot of effort because he was so um uh laser focused on getting that through and who is would that be good for the united states condemning ireland It would be good for Israel.

Could use our political and diplomatic capital on this statement that

would punish Ireland for considering something. The official story on 9-11 is a complete lie.
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Did you ever see?

It sounds like you had a lot of contact or could see David Milstein at work a lot. It sounds like he was a pretty big figure in your office in DC, though.
He's an assistant. It was very sudden.

It was like, oh, you don't hear from him for three days. All of a sudden, you're getting a phone call and a bunch of edits on something and they disappear again.
Did he have your cell? The work cell.

Yeah, he did. How do you get your number? Well, at that point, early on, I think

someone asked that I share with him. So

that was on my end.

Wow. But did you ever see David Milstein like thinking about what's good for the United States or getting aggressive on behalf of what our interests might be as distinct from Israel's interests?

I perceived a lot of his actions as very

Israel-first from my point of view, because that statement didn't make sense. Those edits, the press lines didn't make sense.

And in particular, with Judea and Samaria, that not only would not make sense for how dangerous it is, for what that means, because as you discussed, there's no land barrier to that, but it hurts our relationships to the region.

For example, we rely on Jordan for so many things, but if we start calling it Judea and Samaria,

that undermines our military relationship, our relationship dealing with refugees in Jordan. Also, some of that land is in Jordan.

Exactly. Right.
So, I mean, you can't, I mean, if,

yeah, that would cause problems. And that's one example.
Like, the whole reason. So these are not, this is diplomacy.

This is the State Department of the United States of America, which is still a global superpower even now.

And

so Jordan, the Jordanian economy relies on U.S. aid.
Yep.

We proffer that aid at the request of Israel because Jordan is filled with refugees in in the 1948 war that created Israel and subsequent refugees, 67 and filled refugees, including from Syria, a war that we fought on behalf of Israel.

So we pay Jordan, we also pay Egypt to keep them calm.

And now you're saying he wanted to issue a statement saying to Jordan, by the way, part of your territory and you're what you thought was a sovereign nation actually doesn't belong to you. Yeah.

And just

so

terrible. And so

we can go back to that day three because I cut that line.

And by the way, this isn't a unilateral action by me. There are others who agree with me.
So I'm not doing it with the backing of my own thoughts. Well, that's not a hard one.

Judea and Samaria, I mean, isn't there, I mean, it's been a long time since I run the State Department, but I mean, I always thought there was like a.

Like there's a protocol to things, which in some cases is silly, but some cases is real. Like, do we refer to that region as Judea and Samaria or don't we?

Like, this is something that's been gone over before, correct?

Yeah, no, we, we don't. And we don't.
We don't. We never have.
Secretary Rubio did not use it. President Trump did not use it.
Ambassador Huckabee has.

Now, that's different. Did anyone ever ask Ambassador Huckabee, what land specifically are you referring to when you say that? Not from what I've seen.

Because reporters are morons. That's why.
When someone asks like an obvious question, like Judea and Samaria, where's that? Can you draw it for me on a map?

Show me the boundaries of this place you're talking about. Well, even if they did ask, the lines wouldn't even answer the question directly, right?

Because he would, in person, they should have asked him, Yes, I agree. Yeah, what are you talking about? Where is that? Yeah, no one will ever ask that question.

And Ambassador Huckabee always had extreme comments either in person

or on his Twitter account. But

for most of my time at the State Department, the response would be, well, those are Ambassador Huckabee's words.

We'd do this dance.

But now, now that I've, especially after firing me, you're getting an unleashed Embassy Jerusalem because who's going to do anything to stop them?

Because they already had so much influence to begin with. But when I'm used as an example, they fire me as someone who did the very basic thing of cutting a line that did not make sense.

It's also inconsistent with long-standing U.S. policy.
Right. And if you want to keep your job, who in the future is going to want to...

Here's where you're confusing me. Now, I know that you say he's Mark Levin's stepson, but I mean, nobody takes Mark Levin seriously and no one watches his show.

And like, he's just not a real, not a real person. He's like an angry old man on Twitter.
Who cares whose stepson he is? Like, why doesn't anyone say, hey,

tell that Milstein kid to shut the fuck up? Like, that's not hard. Why doesn't someone do that?

Honestly, that was. That was my question.
I did not know why people would like

people would

acknowledge the pushiness, but that's all I really got at this time. No one ever told him to stop?

It was difficult to say no to him

in a lot of cases. So people did say no, but it took a lot of effort.

So from my vantage point, I'm wondering why would someone have so much influence and why are people almost tiptoeing around it, right? Sounds like they were. Right.

And you would have to take a group effort of like, okay, this bureau and this bureau don't want to put this statement out. And then it would go away.
But that was it.

So, it's really a lot of this, you think, based on your experience, was coming from this one guy.

Correct. Now, it was him, although you're right that he does have limitations over his title, right?

He can't, an advisor to Basha Huckabee, can't fire me, but he does have particular people on the seventh floor.

And what I mean by seventh floor is people around Secretary Rubio that, from my perspective, he

looped in the neocons that were influential, and they have the power to do so. So he would rile them up on Israel or me or whatever issue there was, and they would come down.

So my firing didn't come from Milstein. Of course.
It came from

Secretary Rubio's staff. And these are like a couple of Heritage Foundation guys who want foreign policy.
You can say, oh, President Trump, you know, he's going to have heritage guys there. That's his

right as someone who won the election. But if you listen to President Trump on foreign policy, it doesn't make sense to have a bunch of heritage guys around you.

So you said that

Milstein,

who is a nobody on the org chart,

had sort of amazing power, including making personnel decisions effectively, because he would just go everyone's up over everyone's head along the chain, up to and including the seventh floor management level at the State Department and had influence with people on Secretary Rubio's staff.

Do you know who?

My understanding was that it was his deputy chief of staff that came down in order to

essentially fire me. Now, I think that'd be Dan Holler, formerly of Heritage.
Possible. Possible.
Okay. Yeah.

So you'd heard that. I heard that.
But it was pretty clear to you that it was David Milstein, this assistant to the U.S. ambassador to a foreign country who

was basically line editing statements out of State Department HQ.

Yeah. And what was another hint too was that I had flagged for the

spokesperson's staff the intention to add Judea Samaria, just the FYI, if this happened, right?

And the next day, which was Wednesday,

instead of like moving along, the staff asked,

actually the acting spokesperson asked to speak with David Milstein about the West Bank lines, but without me. And then the next day

is when Thursday is when people started coming down on me. So the way I pieced it together was that that conversation about West Bank lines and Milstein being aware that I cut the Judean Samary line

led to the Thursday-Friday crackdown from the Secretary of Security. Just to be clear, again, putting Judea and Samaria in an official U.S.

government communication is like using the term narnia or something. It's not a real place.
Right. This is fantasy land.
And it's beneath a great power to even have dumb conversations like this.

It opens the door to instability. It opens the door to hurting our relationships significantly with our partners.

It doesn't serve U.S. interests to

did anyone else at the State Department share these views? Like that

crosses just as someone from DC. I just like, no, that crosses like a bright, bright line.
Yeah. Look,

there are

folks who might be close to that worldview.

But from my personal interactions,

Milstein was the farthest out there.

Did I have to ask you this, but I just want to be clear. I don't think you should punish people for their relatives.
So I'm not mad at David Milstein because his stepfather is a douche.

I mean, that's certainly not his fault at all. And neither is David Milstein Mark Levin's fault.
So I just want to be clear about that.

I don't believe in collective punishment, unlike some other countries, like Israel, which is big on collective punishment. I oppose it completely as a Christian.
So I'm not engaging in it here.

But did you ever see Mark Levin over there? Did he have any role in

the

State Department? I never came across anything. I think there was a lot happening above my head, regardless.

Just even my firing, it's like Embassy Jerusalem is contacting this guy who's then trying to crack down on me. And then it's a mystery for a day or two why that's happening.
And then it becomes clear.

So

those conversations are concerning.

And it makes me question, like, if we're talking about the Saudi speech in May of President Trump, how do we go from that kind of statement to these kind of policies?

And so that is my biggest question out of all of this is why did this pivot happen? And what does this mean for Israel policy moving forward? It's already extreme to begin with.

Is it going to become even more radical? It already has.

Does anybody else, I mean, are there other people at the State Department? So,

you know, you came in not as a former Trump staffer, but as someone who, as you've said, agreed with his basic impulse on foreign policy, which is like, hey, let's, let's have more peace, less war.

There must have been other people there who were like full-blown America first people, I would think, would hope. Did any of them ever say to you, this isn't really America first?

It's true. It's look, people were happy after Trump won when like, okay, we're doing, we're getting Trump two, but we don't have John Bolton and Mike

and Nikki Haley back again, right?

The issue is a lot of the personnel problems are still there, but at a more, it's like, it's, it's more subtle.

Like an ambassador Huckabee to me is still part of that same grouping in terms of the damage it can do in our foreign policy. right?

And

so give me an example of the damage you think Huckabee has done to American foreign policy since you

paid close attention to his statements and I and I really haven't. Well, that's it's it's the lack of accountability for uh uh well

having Milstein around adding Judeo Samaria, you know, right? Like these are your trusted senior advisors, right?

And so there's that. There's the no follow-through on what happened in Taipei and in the West, in the West Bank, and what happened to the church in Gaza.
It's our entire Israel policy.

He goes out there.

There were tweets from several weeks ago where he was attacking the UK prime minister. Ambassador was.

He started calling the prime minister out for

questioning Israel's conduct in Gaza. And he said, if you, something along the lines of,

if it wasn't for Dresden, you'd all be speaking German. So greenlighting the slaughter of Palestinians, essentially saying it's okay, which was horrific to endorsed Dresden.

It's on Twitter. It was, it was horrific.
The bombing of Dresden?

Yeah, he was comparing, he was comparing Dresden to what was happening in Gaza and saying, I don't think there's anybody, it's hardly a pro-Hitler.

I'm anti-Hitler for whatever it's worth, just to be clear.

It's hardly pro-Nazi to say that what the Allies did and the British, really, mostly at Dresden, was a war crime. I mean, nobody, nobody would

say otherwise. He endorsed the dresden bombing who gives an ambassador the green light to

poke at a a allies prime minister the uk a true ally um and two

um

like the the

the nonchalant attitude towards like the slaughter of people both in dresden or in comparing it to what's happening in gaza is it's yeah

that's not um so of course it's not the that's not the christian view you know murdering innocents is always wrong, period. That is the matter

who does it. And

I despise the UK and its prime minister, and I'm totally happy to urinate on both. But it should be from the perspective of what's good for the United States, not what's good for another country.

Like, that's bonkers. That's really.

Yeah.

Does anybody say anything about that? Like internally? Is there any effort

all the time? People are like, oh, cringe. People cringe at it when they saw those tweets.
But well, so typically in an administration,

you know, the ambassador serves the president as his

diploma, you know, the chief diplomat in the country to which he's posted.

And, you know, there are a million examples all the time of the ambassador getting called back to Washington or getting a cable from D.C. Whoa, that's not our policy.

You know, pull it in line with what the president's view is because that's who you work for. Right.
So if. And did anyone do that with Huckabee? Never.
You have

he's representing Secretary Rubio. Secretary Rubio is representing the president, and no one is stopping Ambassador Huckabee from going fully unleashed.

And that's why my very basic edits and suggestions from that week was such a red flag because they had to get rid of me immediately.

What that means is that if we're not stopping Ambassador Huckabee at that level, that becomes policy. And so, yes, yes, right? That's right.
Right. So that's it.

And

if I'm going to be fired for lines of what were or should be, and I think are President Trump's views, then things are moving in a more radical direction and they will.

Yeah. I mean, I guess I am for moving in a bunch of different radical directions, like banning high-interest loans.

You know, I'm strongly for that.

What I am not in favor of is moving in radical directions on behalf of a foreign country whose interests are not the same as ours, that are aligned in some things and diverge at other points, but are are not the same.

Why would you want to be radical on behalf of another country? Right. It makes no sense.
Well, it's unpatriotic. Yes.
And it's totally wrong. And it's America last.

It's also a form of treachery, I think, subverting our foreign policy on behalf of another country that I wasn't not a citizen of that country. What do you this is my tax dollars? What are you doing?

Right? Right. And we did all of this.
We're burning diplomatic capital left and right. Australia, the UK,

Canada.

We have all these U.S. allies considering recognizing the Palestinian state.
And we're going out there attacking them one by one

on behalf of Israel. Those are our partners.
Is it worth it?

But we're also not, I mean, they've, all those countries have basically eliminated human rights in their own countries, eliminated freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of association.

They've got political prisoners.

It's crazy what those countries are doing to their own citizens. We don't say a word.
But if they criticize a foreign, another country, then we attack them. Yeah, we have

other issues we could discuss with them. But instead, we choose to make Israel this odd red line.
And it takes a lot of diplomatic capital to attack your allies.

We need them for so many things.

It doesn't matter if it's trade or war or... some resolution of the UN.
This is terrific. So I just said, I want to ask you a couple of just policy questions.
I mean, and just if you don't mind,

because they're speculative, but I just want to draw on information that you gleaned in your job at the State Department. What is

as non-emotional and clinical as you can be? What is the plan here with Gaza and the West Bank? What do you think? I keep wondering, like, okay.

You know, every day it's a, no, we killed them, but it was a mistake or we thought they were Hamas. Okay, got it.
But like, what,

what is the plan? Are they really going to move 2 million people out of Gaza? Do you think that's actually going to happen?

That's, this is what I'm afraid about.

On the West Bank, I think we were setting up

annexation. And I think the news from the past couple of days shows that that's true.
What does annexation mean?

There's going to be an Israeli takeover of the West Bank. And basically, Area C is was supposed to be where the Palestinians had full control.

The Israelis want to take over that and call the entire west bank um and call it is states it part of israel and

and do they are the palestinians who live there get voting rights

these are all questions that they have not answered and i don't don't believe anyone wants to answer why it's such an obvious question i know what's your plan why did why does no one ask that question like what do people even ask even even the idf in some occasions in some occasions asked like hey this is a military takeover what are we going to do like and the ministers don't care care.

For whatever it's worth, it's not my country. And I'm not that interested.

But I just notice that the IDF, for all the grief that it takes, has actually been a voice of restraint in Gaza and the West Bank, at least publicly.

They're like, wait a second, you're asking us to make a flag going into Gaza City. They're like, hey, this is going to be

the same thing. They're just a military with a bunch of reservists.
You know, some professionals, but lots of reservists.

And like every military, they kind of want to know why they're putting their lives at risk. At least that's my read on it.
Yeah,

it's true. And

that's a whole nother discussion, but I am worried about the political and direction of Israel. It's going to be more and more extreme.
And those guardrails are gone.

But they're taking over the West Bank. We don't know what that looks like.
And it's extremely dangerous.

But what's the pretext?

The residents of the West Bank had nothing to do with the attacks on southern Israel, right? it opens the door because you're so focused on Gaza. And this is.
But is there a justification for it?

Is it like they don't have any hostages in the West Bank, do they? No. No, there is no justification.

What's awful is that instead of focusing on securing the release of the hostages or

just securing their own country, they've used this entire war, it's nearly two years now, to

pursue opportunities. We're going to bomb Beirut and kill all these civilians.
We're going to bomb Syria,

kill the civilians on too many occasions there.

The bombing raids on Yemen, start a potential war with Iran that if President Trump hadn't ended it, could have gotten to a spiraled.

And so it's very dangerous that we're letting Israel take the front seat of our U.S. foreign policy when we have the power to end these wars.
Well, we're paying for them. We're paying for them.

And we paid for the, you know, the Israeli strikes on Iran.

And

I, and I've said this to, you know, anyone who will listen, I think this will end the Republican Party.

I don't think they're going to get elected to anything anytime soon after this if they don't pull back and establish independence from this Israel or any other foreign power. It's not about Israel.

It's about any letting any other foreign country run your country. That's you can't have that.
Everyone hates it. It's super unpopular and it's very obvious.

And if you want more Republicans in office, you can't act like this. Like, I think they're blowing up the party over this.
That's my feeling. I'm saying this with love.
I'm a, unlike you.

I'm, I've been a pretty,

I don't vote that much, but when I vote, it's Republican, you know?

It's true. They voted for America.
I wouldn't vote for this. No way.
Absolutely. And think about the

there's a first on one end, it's the America first aspect that's very disappointing because this is America last in every possible way.

And on the on the endless war front, every campaign, every every winning presidential candidate said, we're not going to get, we're trying to avoid these wars, and they don't follow through.

And yet we're now funding

this disaster

in Gaza. But do you think that those, so there, I mean, estimates very, we don't know how many people have been killed in Gaza?

No one's allowed to find out. It's like, yeah, 60K is definitely.

What do you think the real number is in Gaza?

I've read other

folks who've give their estimates and it's always

100,000 up to 200,000, even more. So the numbers that I've seen on the estimate scale

are horrific. Do our intel agencies have good estimates on this? I would imagine.
But those haven't percolated

to the State Department at your level anyway. Yeah.

No, absolutely not. And

I wish we could be discussing this.

And I'm also horrified, not just from the sheer numbers of killed, it's the lingering psychological effect of these poor civilians, like children who've lost limbs, children who lost parents, who the damage is going to be decades and decades long.

For sure. And there will be radicalism, you know, and probably including violence.
And I just pray it's not directed against the United States, but I fear that it will be.

But that leaves, what, 2 million people still in Gaza, Palestinians, mostly Muslim, but also Christians. What happens to them? I just keep wondering, what happens to them?

The policy, the comments, the policies have always shown a certain disdain. Like, oh, we will pay them off for them to move out.

They're not actually starving. It's all these,

not only are they getting bombed and

lose their homes and their family members, they're being thrown around like this annoyance.

And it's horrible.

But just based on the reporting, it looks like we are trying to push them out to a different country.

Every two months, there's a new rumor. It seems like we're talking to these other countries in Africa.

The U.S. government is?

Well,

it depends on each specific case. There has been reporting that Israel is trying to do this on their own.

And if we're involved, and there's also been some reporting on whether our own government officials have spoken with like the Libyan government as well. So do you think it's possible that U.S.

government officials have talked to foreign governments about accepting the population of Gaza as refugees. Do you think that's possible? Yes.
Do you think that happened?

It's probable.

That's disgusting.

I mean, that's just like shocking to me. I don't want to believe that could be true.
Yeah. And why are we doing that? What do we have to do with this? Right.

And it's always about our diplomatic power. Like

Israel's diplomatic power is limited, but who can get these objectives done? We can.

So that's why in our last act is a superpower yeah that's why these officials from mc jerusalem are are dangerous because they're they're that connection is being made

right on on like you commit a trial well first of all mike huckabee endorsing dresden

that you know i just refer you to the new testament that is not that is not permitted for christians to be in favor of that just it's just not even close so i don't know why i know huckabee i've always liked him i don't know what in the world if he actually said that i don't know what what he was thinking.

I'm going to look it up the second we get off this interview. But that's really shocking to me that he would say something like that.

But in general, there's been a coarsening, I think, of people watching this stuff, celebrating pager attacks and people getting their dicks blown off. Stuff.
I mean, like, why would we celebrate that?

Yeah. But Ben Shapiro was on there jumping up and down with glee when that happened.
No, it's, it's, it's an indictment of

like

our soul.

Why are, why did we lose this ability to empathize?

If you think it's thrilling that a country would indiscriminately detonate explosives in people's pockets, but they don't know who's holding those things, actually.

They don't know who's standing next to them.

If you think that's great,

you know.

Children died.

Oh, I know.

You know, anyway,

I'm really sickened by it and I'm infuriated by the requirement to celebrate it. Right.

Why are we in this era of

celebrating these violent attacks and celebrating a new weapon that comes out? But each time there's a diplomatic endeavor to end a war, it's so controversial and so heavy and people

it's sold to people in such a negative way. So that dichotomy is a true problem where...
As empires die, people go crazy. This is one of the things that's pretty consistent through history.

They lose their sense of reality and they become violence worshipers. And I just hate to see it happening to this country that I love so much and that I'm never leaving.
But like, this is really dark.

Yeah. So dark.
It is dark. So what, so you don't know, bottom line, what the plan is for the population of Gaza or the West Bank.
Yeah. I do know they cut my line on forced displacement.

And now there's new reporting on them moving them out of Gaza. So

it's not headed in the right direction. So America is for forced displacement.
I think this country was founded by people who

bonkers. Okay, last question.
What was your firing like?

Did they explain to you why you were being let go? Never explained anything to me.

And technically, I heard the NEA, my bureau, Nearston Affairs, technically never heard either. So it really came from up top.

So very odd.

They did ask me about that line. That's the only hint that we have.

Look, the State Department, with all the issues that it has, does have...

amazing patriotic patriotic Americans working there every day. I worked with them.

They're trying their best. They're doing their work.
They're smart. And

I miss working with them.

I was someone that was well established in the building with political appointees and civil servants. And

they just pulled the rug from under me, out of the blue over what I explained to you earlier, which was pretty basic stuff. And

on the Sunday, I believe it was August 17th,

lost access. And then I caught a text from my contractor letting me know.
Did you call, have you called David Milstein to ask what happened? I have not. I have not.

Maybe we should call him after this.

Could.

We could. Look,

this whole situation was so unexpected. Like, I was just living my life,

going to work every single day, five days a week. I was doing a lot of overtime.

I drafted tweets that Secretary Rubio put out, including I was up at 11 p.m., 12 a.m.

Uh, when the horrific killing of those two Israeli diplomats, I was the one who was up in the middle of the night drafting a tweet for that to come out, the ones who are murdered in the U.S., correct, yeah, often.

So,

I was there for all these moments and working alongside people with different political backgrounds. And

uh, to know that these folks just without discussing with me, without getting to know me, without talking to me, uh, saw those lines and they were like gone.

And

it's awful. And just in the office itself, it just puts this chilling effect for everybody, you know?

So

I will miss those colleagues, but they're good people.

I mean, the interest of the United States should be the beginning and the end of the concern of the State Department. Yep.
Period. Absolutely.
So I appreciate your taking the time to do this.

Thank you for talking to me. Thank you.

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