Whistleblower Exposes the Real Puppet Masters Controlling the State Department and Plans for Gaza
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 20 minutes
Words per Minute
175.22092
Summary
In this episode, we sit down with a former State Department Press Officer to talk about what it's like being a Press Officer in the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau. We talk about the role of a press officer, what it s like to work in the bureau, and what it takes to be a good one.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Ontario. The wait is over. The gold standard of online casinos has arrived. Golden Nugget
00:00:06.000
Online Casino is live, bringing Vegas-style excitement and a world-class gaming experience
00:00:11.040
right to your fingertips. Whether you're a seasoned player or just starting, signing up is fast and
00:00:16.680
simple. And in just a few clicks, you can have access to our exclusive library of the best slots
00:00:21.740
and top-tier table games. Make the most of your downtime with unbeatable promotions and jackpots
00:00:27.220
that can turn any mundane moment into a golden opportunity at Golden Nugget Online Casino.
00:00:32.820
Take a spin on the slots, challenge yourself at the tables, or join a live dealer game to feel the
00:00:37.920
thrill of real-time action, all from the comfort of your own devices. Why settle for less when you
00:00:43.140
can go for the gold at Golden Nugget Online Casino? Gambling problem? Call ConnexOntario
00:00:49.080
1-866-531-2600. 19 and over. Physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See
00:00:56.340
goldennuggetcasino.com for details. Please play responsibly.
00:00:59.940
So you were marched out of the State Department two weeks ago. You left involuntarily. And I want
00:01:06.600
to hear why. But first, what did you do there? What was your job at the state?
00:01:09.640
I was a press officer in the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau. Started September 2024. Essentially,
00:01:16.580
the main bread and butter role of a press officer is twofold. One is preparing the spokesperson
00:01:22.400
before they go on the podium and do their daily press briefing.
00:01:25.800
And second, reporters ask questions all the time. So a reporter with XYZ outlet submits a question,
00:01:33.340
and it's our job to use cleared lines, or cleared meaning approved lines, and send them back
00:01:39.760
to the reporter. And if you ever read an article and it says, a State Department spokesperson said,
00:01:47.100
X, those are press officers taking those cleared lines and sharing it with that reporter.
00:02:15.020
Good question. So a press officer will draft the lines. From there, it will go up a ladder,
00:02:24.740
essentially. So there'll be desk officers, leadership in the Indian press office itself,
00:02:31.580
and then it goes up to the seventh floor, meaning the Secretary's Policy Planning Office,
00:02:37.160
the Deputy Secretary of State's Office. But it's not themself. You're not going to get the Deputy
00:02:42.280
Secretary of State looking at this, right? It's going to just be like a staffer who represents
00:02:45.580
that equity. So it becomes an inclusive process to make sure everyone has eyes on it. And if there
00:02:53.040
are flags, they'll let you know. For example, you could be drafting a line on Israel, but it involves
00:02:59.620
Lebanon. But there's another press officer and a whole other desk and leadership working on Lebanon
00:03:04.880
that might have an equity that you may not be aware of that they'll edit the line.
00:03:09.600
So describe the bureau that you work for, Near Eastern Affairs.
00:03:13.720
Well, it's an old school name. It basically means anything involved in the Middle East.
00:03:21.360
The whole Middle East, not just the Levant, like the whole Middle East.
00:03:23.740
Yeah. Near East, yeah. They need to update the name. I think people are aware. But yeah,
00:03:27.960
it's the entire Middle East. So they use all these acronyms. So Israeli-Palestinian Affairs
00:03:36.360
is IPA or ISPAL. Saudi, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, that whole grouping is ARP for Arabian Peninsula.
00:03:43.680
And then North Africa is its own entity as well, from Morocco to Egypt, goes under NA.
00:03:48.860
Okay. So it's the Levant, the Gulf, Iran, yeah. North Africa.
00:03:56.660
Huh. Interesting. And that's all in the same bureau. So the State Department divides the world into bureaus.
00:04:05.840
Correct. So from Canada down to Chile's WHA, Western Hemisphere Affairs, Asia's EAP, East Asia Pacific.
00:04:19.460
Correct. E-U-R for Europe, Africa's AF. I was an NEA and I was a press officer there,
00:04:27.120
originally covering Lebanon, Jordan, just for a couple months. And I quickly shifted to ISPAL.
00:04:36.240
Whoa. So that's the hottest of all desks, I would think.
00:04:41.680
Most scrutiny, most at stake, rhetoric, most closely supervised, I'm just guessing, but right?
00:04:50.020
Yes, it's true. The press officer for Israeli-Palestine affairs, you're on a stage constantly
00:04:57.080
because you're getting the most questions from reporters, for good reason. The spokesperson
00:05:02.260
is going to deal with the most questions at the podium about the topic. And so it was
00:05:09.220
a compliment, yet difficult for me to process the fact that it was requested from various people
00:05:16.500
in leadership when the administration was changing in January. They said, hey, I know you've only been
00:05:23.400
here for a couple months, but we're going to put you in this position, which was surprising,
00:05:27.820
but I wanted to take on the challenge at the time.
00:05:30.460
Really? So you were asked to do that by the incoming administration, by the Trump administration?
00:05:34.500
It was, well, it was people from, it was leadership in NEA, which some of them were civil servants,
00:05:41.280
but they were experienced people that recognized how heavy of a topic it was going to be coming in.
00:05:46.900
Huh. How do you get current on that? How do you do your research?
00:05:51.060
So it's multifold. So we do receive like, in terms of standard mainstream media,
00:05:57.040
we do get like copies of articles and coverage. And it's not necessarily politically
00:06:02.920
isolated, at least in the beginning it wasn't. So I would see everything in my email inbox,
00:06:08.380
plus personally, right? I'm always absorbing things. And you're only going to be a good press officer
00:06:12.940
if you're reading Twitter and the standard emails you're getting through the inbox.
00:06:19.220
So you're absorbing a lot of information and it's not just the details. Like, of course,
00:06:24.100
if I have a question, I'm going to go to the Israel experts at the State Department. So if
00:06:29.800
there's a detail I don't know, there might be a desk officer or someone like that that would know
00:06:35.000
the numbers or the challenges that I need for a specific press line. For me though, as a press
00:06:43.000
officer, my addition in those conversations is like more stylistic. Okay. If we put this line out
00:06:49.020
there, we're going to invite these problems, or it's good if we say it this way, because
00:06:53.280
this will help us, it'll defend us in this other way. So it was a stylistic endeavor from day to day.
00:07:02.660
And you don't have full control because obviously the personality of someone at the podium is going
00:07:08.040
to say it one way, even though I was hoping this line would deliver this other way, right? You don't
00:07:17.440
Well, right now it's more the spokesperson for the entire department that I was briefing.
00:07:22.440
So it was Tammy Bruce. She left. And then there's deputies that are currently-
00:07:31.100
Okay. So were you given parameters? Like, how do you get your orders? Like, we do say this,
00:07:41.700
So the main day-to-day activity, and I think people may or may not be aware of, but are
00:07:48.160
probably not aware of, is that I have these packets called press guidance, called PG.
00:07:53.080
So on Tuesday and Thursday, which are the days that a spokesperson would go on to the podium,
00:07:58.440
I would have all the sample questions. And some of them are tasked from the main press
00:08:05.160
office in, at the State Department. But I also would come up with my own questions. Like,
00:08:11.240
hey, we're getting this question a lot. We need to have lines for this. We can't leave
00:08:15.660
this alone. So I'd have, I'd create a packet, clear it through the building, like I was saying
00:08:20.340
earlier, through the seventh floor. And then I'd present that brief to the spokesperson about
00:08:27.220
How do you know what the official U.S. position, especially on that topic, Israel-Palestine,
00:08:33.880
I mean, that's, again, the most politicized area there is, and the stakes are high. So how do you
00:08:41.040
know what the official U.S. position is on that conflict?
00:08:43.840
It's a very good question. And especially in the beginning of the administration, it's a bit of
00:08:47.460
an art. You're taking the gold for a press officer or lines for the principles. Essentially,
00:08:54.040
if President Trump says something, if Special Envoy Whitcoff says something, I take those quotes
00:08:59.040
and I'm like, okay, that's policy. So if he's talking about-
00:09:03.480
And I think that's literally true, right? I mean, the president sort of unilaterally
00:09:08.500
Yeah. And there's no questioning, like a quote that comes from our principle, especially President
00:09:12.220
Trump or Secretary Rubio for the State Department is often the case. So I would take those lines
00:09:20.040
and it would answer certain questions that would come up. Where are we with the ceasefire?
00:09:24.040
Oh, Special Envoy Whitcoff went on XYZ Sunday show. So I'm going to pull that line and I'll
00:09:31.080
brief the spokesperson and then she or he can quote Special Envoy Whitcoff at the podium
00:09:36.240
again, because that's the policy. That's the easiest way of doing it. You don't always
00:09:39.440
have quotes. So what would happen instead is you kind of have-
00:09:46.040
Well, I mean, if you say, you know, you should respond in this way and then cite the president
00:09:50.700
or Steve Whitcoff or Secretary Rubio, then that kind of ends the conversation, right?
00:09:55.580
It should end the conversation. What was surprising, and this will go back to when I ended up departing
00:10:01.860
and getting fired in August, was that on a specific question, one of the three events I think led
00:10:08.620
up to my firing was on a Monday, we received a question about forced displacement, which is
00:10:18.020
essentially ethnic cleansing, and what our policy was about Israel intending to move Palestinians and
00:10:27.360
Yeah, that was every two or three months, we had a new reporting would come out. In the
00:10:33.360
spring, it was they're moving Palestinians and Gaza to Libya. There was a rumor about Somaliland,
00:10:40.080
even though we don't recognize Somaliland, but there was reporting about, are we going to
00:10:44.340
do an exchange where we recognize Somaliland, but they have to take on Palestinians. And then
00:10:49.040
we had an Ethiopia round. And then the last round that I witnessed before I left was South
00:11:00.780
Appears somewhere in the press, and we received a question. What's your response to this reporting?
00:11:06.020
And then I came up with a line, but it wasn't a line that like, I just came up out of the
00:11:12.960
blue. It was something that President Trump and Special Envoy Whitcoff had said in other
00:11:17.420
words in the spring. I said, we do not support forced displacement.
00:11:21.040
And why, what did they say about it? So that was your interpretation of what they said. Do
00:11:26.100
you remember what they said, what Whitcoff and Trump said on that topic?
00:11:29.260
So specifically Special Envoy Whitcoff said something, we're not, said something along
00:11:32.860
the lines of, we're not trying to evict anybody.
00:11:35.420
So from, as a press officer, there's an art to it, right? Because you're not, you can
00:11:39.860
sometimes do the exact quote, or you can just come up with a new line that reflects that quote.
00:11:43.740
So we've done a lot of segments over many years attacking college. Most of them are not worth
00:11:48.160
sending your kids. They're definitely not worth paying for. In fact, they're counterproductive.
00:11:51.860
They're the source of a lot of this country's problems, but that doesn't mean that all colleges
00:11:54.720
are bad. We've looked far and wide for good ones and Grand Canyon University is near the
00:11:59.920
top of the list. It's a private Christian university located in the Arizona mountains,
00:12:05.280
the best part of Arizona. Grand Canyon believes that every one of us is endowed by God with
00:12:10.620
inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Rights are not something
00:12:14.940
that politicians give us. Rights are something they are sworn to uphold and defend. It's a totally
00:12:20.520
different way of looking at the world. At GCU, purpose starts with service equipping students
00:12:25.520
to affect their families, communities, and the world for good. Whether you're called to business,
00:12:30.740
education, ministry, whatever it is, Grand Canyon University helps you honor that calling
00:12:35.160
while glorifying God through your work. Real purpose in life. Over 340 academic programs
00:12:41.620
offered online, on campus, in hybrid formats. Take your pick. GCU makes education accessible
00:12:47.400
and is tailored to you and your goals. Whether you're starting fresh, you're going back to
00:12:51.860
school to advance your career. If you're ready to pursue a degree and a purpose, Grand Canyon
00:12:56.720
University, GCU is ready for you. It's private, it's Christian, it's affordable. Visit gcu.edu today.
00:13:04.400
Hate to brag, but we're pretty confident this show is the most vehemently pro-dog podcast you're
00:13:10.460
ever going to see. We can take or leave some people, but dogs are non-negotiable. They are the
00:13:15.960
best. They really are our best friends. And so for that reason, we're thrilled to have a new partner
00:13:20.460
called Dutch Pet. It's the fastest growing pet telehealth service. Dutch.com is on a mission
00:13:27.900
to create what you need, what you actually need. Affordable, quality veterinary care anytime,
00:13:32.380
no matter where you are. They will get your dog or cat what you need immediately. It's offering
00:13:38.920
an exclusive discount, Dutch is, for our listeners. You get 50 bucks off your vet care per year.
00:13:44.340
Visit dutch.com slash Tucker to learn more. Use the code Tucker for $50 off. That is an unlimited
00:13:50.860
vet visit. $82 a year. 82 bucks a year. We actually use this. Dutch has vets who can handle any pet under
00:14:00.580
any circumstance in a 10-minute call. It's pretty amazing, actually. You never have to leave your
00:14:05.500
house. You don't have to throw the dog in the truck. No wasted time waiting for appointments.
00:14:10.040
No wasted money on clinics or visit fees. Unlimited visits and follow-ups for no extra cost, plus free
00:14:15.660
shipping on all products for up to five pets. It sounds amazing like it couldn't be real, but it
00:14:21.220
actually is real. Visit dutch.com slash Tucker to learn more. Use the code Tucker for 50 bucks off
00:14:27.100
your veterinary care per year. Your dogs, your cats, and your wallet will thank you.
00:14:33.100
So we made a pledge only to advertise products that we would use or do use, and here's one that
00:14:39.240
I personally used this morning. It's Liberty Safe. There's a huge one in my garage. It is the company
00:14:45.340
that protects your valuables. High-end safe lines represent the pinnacle of American-made. They're
00:14:51.600
made here in the U.S., pinnacle of American-made security and craftsmanship. They're more than just
00:14:56.200
safes. They are a safeguard. They've got seven-gauge-thick American steel, and they're beautiful.
00:15:04.260
Any kind of pink color you want, polished hardware. We have one. They're really good-looking. They do not
00:15:10.900
detract from a room. They enhance a room. I keep my father's shotguns and all kinds of other things in
00:15:16.740
there. You can keep jewelry, money, anything else that you want to keep safe. When you put your
00:15:21.280
belongings in Liberty Safe, you can just relax. Safes come equipped with motion-activated lighting,
00:15:27.100
drawers for storage, locking bars, dehumidifiers, and up to 150 minutes of certified fire resistance.
00:15:33.180
You can customize them any way you want. They are the best. We highly recommend them. Visit
00:15:38.320
libertysafe.com to find a deal to learn about how you can protect what matters most to you.
00:15:45.560
I think forced displacement and eviction are synonyms. Any fair person would say that.
00:15:50.380
Right. And keep in mind, this had already been cleared. It was approved for about a couple weeks
00:15:55.820
before this particular question popped up because the Ethiopia rumor was like July 28th. So I put it
00:16:01.840
in the PG, put it in the packet, cleared through. I briefed it multiple times. So when that question
00:16:07.700
came up, I said, I actually probably have the right to just send that line because it cleared so many
00:16:12.740
times. But to be extra careful, I sent it out to the, uh, uh, the, the spokesperson and their staff
00:16:21.320
and made sure the, the most important equities were re-clearing it. And from my understanding,
00:16:28.880
now I wasn't on the chain, but from my understanding, they went to the secretary's
00:16:32.440
office and they cut that line of, we do not support forced displacement. The only other bullet that we
00:16:38.680
have, which is, um, uh, pretty standard is we don't discuss private, diplomatic conversations,
00:16:45.420
which is standard. I would always say, you know, the investigation is ongoing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:50.100
Exactly. Yeah. It's one of those lines. So that, that line was there. So that's all we ended up
00:16:56.880
providing. Um, so there's some sensitive, which I found very odd because out of the three events,
00:17:05.520
I'll, I can get into the other ones, but that was like number two. But when the day or the two days
00:17:09.940
before I was, uh, fired that Thursday and Friday, the only feedback that I got, because, because my
00:17:16.080
bureau was confused as to why, uh, the secretary's office was coming down on me. Right. Cause they
00:17:21.280
don't know me. They don't, I don't interact with a random press officer at NEA. Right. Maybe a little
00:17:25.380
bit more because of the sensitive topic, but chances are generally low. My leadership has said,
00:17:30.720
hey, they're asking where you got that line from, from Monday. I'm like, today's Thursday.
00:17:35.480
You're four days later. They're asking me where I, where I got this line that I drafted, but they
00:17:41.340
cut it. I went through the procedure, right? I cut it. They cut it. And then the reporter
00:17:45.380
never saw that line. Did they explain why they cut it? No. They, all I got from, all I heard,
00:17:50.680
all I, all I witnessed was the, uh, acting spokesperson saying. So you were, um, paraphrasing
00:17:56.400
the envoy, Steve Wyckoff and the president of the United States, Donald Trump, when you said the
00:18:02.540
United States does not support a forced in forced displacement. Yep. I don't think we do support
00:18:09.380
that. Do we, by the way? I won't hope so. Yeah. One would hope not. Right. And especially
00:18:14.820
we're not going to pay for that. Um, and they cut that out, but didn't explain why. Right. And then
00:18:20.680
your supervisors came to you and said, Hey, they're complaining about you basically. Right. And they
00:18:24.840
didn't, they only specified that line, just like the act of drafting it. And I was like,
00:18:29.220
I have a track record. Um, and they asked me Thursday afternoon and Friday morning twice
00:18:34.380
in a row, which is very odd for a random bullet. I was like, I have a, I have the evidence from
00:18:38.260
July 28th of clearing this press guidance with that line. And here are the irrelevant quotes.
00:18:43.460
Did anyone say, by the way, you may not know this, but the United States does support
00:18:47.580
forced displacement. No one said that. No one said that. But by the way, sorry, I got it wrong.
00:18:52.700
Um, we're all about forced displacement. Okay. We want to, we want kind of want to
00:18:57.080
trail a tear situation here because we're for that. It's, it's tragic because it's such a standard
00:19:02.740
bonker. Yeah. That's something you would want to advertise. You want to put out there that we're
00:19:07.700
against this. Like, Hey, we still have some moral standing somewhere. Um, and when the Washington Post
00:19:13.440
piece came out, like the yesterday, two days ago saying where there's some plan involving
00:19:18.780
the consultations of Tony Blair of, of moving Gauzen's out and we, we, but we may pay for
00:19:26.960
something, a piece of it. And I'm like, why? So is this why I got fired? It's because I was,
00:19:32.640
I was still sticking through this line and they saw me as some kind of obstacle, which I wasn't
00:19:37.400
because I was going through the exact procedures they wanted. But I knew that when I was fired
00:19:41.320
as someone who was again, close with political appointees and was civil servants and was pretty
00:19:46.880
well-established in NEA. Again, like I said earlier, you don't get this role covering Israeli
00:19:52.260
Palestinian affairs on a whim. Um, and I'm subtly pushed out. That means things are going to go
00:19:57.280
into a very radical direction. Uh, well, yeah, I should also say, cause I, I know that you will
00:20:02.800
be attacked and I'll be attacked for speaking to you, uh, on the following grounds. This guy's a
00:20:07.400
partisan Democrat who liked Bernie. He was a saboteur, a wrecker. Um, I know from our conversations
00:20:14.860
off camera, at least what you said to me was basically agreed with Trump's foreign policy
00:20:20.000
instincts, you know, fewer pointless wars, like get along with more people. Yeah. That was always,
00:20:27.140
that's fair. I've, I've always been an advocate for ending endless war on a personal level.
00:20:32.800
And so when president Trump is saying, Hey, we don't want to get into any forever wars. I'm like,
00:20:37.920
that's great. And we technically started with a ceasefire in Gaza and started the administration.
00:20:43.320
That was something to, to, uh, we could expand it on. We were, uh, speaking to the Iranians.
00:20:48.380
So there's so many chances for true peace, but things went in the wrong direction. I would say
00:20:54.140
somewhere in the summer, right? Uh, I remember listening to president Trump's speech in Saudi
00:21:00.920
in May where he was talking about amazing speech. Love that speech. I remember I was, I was like,
00:21:05.560
I was cheering. Exactly. And in my, in my cubicle at the state department, I was like,
00:21:09.440
he's a great speech. I was too. That was one of the best speeches ever given. And I was like,
00:21:13.340
this is, this is amazing. It was ballsy too. Yes. Speech. Calling out neocons. Like,
00:21:17.560
Oh, I know. No one calls out neocons in DC, right? Like we, we brushed that under the rug.
00:21:22.080
We kept moving. Right. You still see him as an analyst here and there on TV.
00:21:26.000
Here and there. They dominate the biggest cable news channel. Yes. I'm aware. Yeah. Yeah. So,
00:21:30.620
so glad to see that. But then why two weeks later, were we sabotaging our own talks with Iran and then
00:21:37.120
bombing them? Right. So the events, like the idea that I'm some partisan is, is just wrong. I,
00:21:45.640
yes, on a personal, uh, Avenue, I don't want any more endless wars. And, but president Trump was in
00:21:51.900
line with that. Uh, and I was going, I was doing my job in line with the procedures that were necessary
00:21:56.780
every single day. Yeah. But it sounds like you agreed with him. So I guess that's my point. If you,
00:22:00.440
you liked that, I mean, I don't know, you know, a lot of these, some of the labels are real,
00:22:05.600
but some of them are also created and certainly sustained in order to keep people from listening
00:22:10.260
to each other. So they don't discover they actually agree on a lot. Yeah. And if you love the Saudi
00:22:14.760
speech and I love the Saudi speech, then we're probably not too far from each other then. Cause I
00:22:20.720
thought that, and that was a Donald Trump speech. And by the way, if you're such a partisan Democrat,
00:22:24.020
you're admitting on camera that you love to Donald Trump speech. You're not too partisan, I guess. Uh,
00:22:29.720
but anyway, I just want to say, cause I'm here. I'm honestly, it matters. Yeah. It's like,
00:22:33.360
it's the, it's the, it's the issues we have in foreign policy that I matter, that I care
00:22:36.600
about. I don't care about the labels per se. Well, I don't either. Well, they're clearly
00:22:39.940
meaningless. Yes. If we're both cheering on the, the Riyadh speech. So yes. Okay. I just
00:22:44.440
wanted to establish that. So you start hearing from your bosses like, Hey, what is this thing
00:22:49.160
that you put in there about opposing forced displacement? Yeah. We've always. Yeah. Four
00:22:55.480
or five days earlier, not even like the next day. There was like a delay annoyance. It was weird.
00:23:01.380
Huh? So you said that there were three examples of this where they found problems with your work.
00:23:07.660
Right. And some of this, it kind of made sense from hindsight cause I didn't like in the moment I
00:23:13.320
didn't realize, but Sunday, um, Israel had, had, uh, uh, struck a tent with several journalists
00:23:20.660
living inside, including Anas who would, who millions of people had watched cover the events
00:23:25.580
in Gaza. Uh, they all died. I drafted a line, a few lines. And by the way, there were not
00:23:31.300
saw some softy lines. The only thing that was there that they didn't like was I did share
00:23:36.420
condolences, which is pretty standard, uh, uh, policy. Condolences. What do you mean?
00:23:43.200
So I said, we share condolences for the families of the killed journalists. That's all.
00:23:47.960
Well, that sounds, that sounds like hate speech to me. Yeah. Condolences to the families of people
00:23:53.440
who got killed. Yeah. Noncombatants killed in war. Yep. Yep. And what's so disappointing too,
00:23:59.680
was that. Wait, wait. So what, so what happened when you put that in there? I was immediately told,
00:24:05.060
um, from a senior official that we don't know what Anas did essentially. And I was like,
00:24:14.360
that's odd. And it's what he did. Like, we don't know what his like conduct was. Like,
00:24:19.580
we don't know. We need like, we need more information. He might, it was, she or he was
00:24:24.040
alluding to the fact that he may have done something or he's a, he's a problematic actor
00:24:30.880
in some way, but it was weird. Okay. I, I, let me just say, I would be totally comfortable
00:24:36.420
sharing condolences with Osama bin Laden's family. I hate Osama bin Laden. On the other hand,
00:24:41.860
if somebody dies, it's okay to say, I'm sorry to his family that.
00:24:49.480
That's immaterial. I would say that to the family of an executed murderer in a prison. It doesn't mean
00:24:55.980
I support the murderer or the murderer, but this is family. Like that's okay. That's called like
00:25:00.880
human decency. And anyone who's against that. Yeah. And it seemed that we're setting up this
00:25:07.260
constant, this is, this is my issue that I noticed from the get-go, a constant deferring to Israel.
00:25:13.240
It was like waiting for some statement, like let them speak first. And then on Monday, Israel said,
00:25:18.200
all Hamas, which is a throwaway line they've used. All Hamas meaning what?
00:25:26.320
Yeah. Or at least on us, if I remember correctly. And so they brushed that away.
00:25:31.920
Look, my point when I heard that was, what does our intelligence say? If they were like being super
00:25:38.240
strict and said, Hey, we're going to, we're going to triple check using our U.S. intelligence
00:25:44.200
of who these people are? Maybe, maybe, right? I still don't agree with cutting the condolences
00:25:50.620
line, but sure. But why is there, oh, Israel said this, done.
00:25:57.400
Right. Right. So what's with the instinct to defer to Israel when we have the entire apparatus
00:26:05.280
We've got like 17 different intelligence services in this country that take, you know,
00:26:08.860
a trillion dollars a year or whatever the actual budget is. And we don't consult them at all.
00:26:13.220
We wait for the Israeli spokesman to tell us what reality is.
00:26:18.960
Yeah. And how is that America first, right? This whole apparatus of like, of, of mirroring
00:26:25.600
certain Israeli statements and waiting for them to comment first was something that I found
00:26:32.880
tragic. It was, it was odd. And that's what ended up happening. By the press briefing that
00:26:40.600
Tuesday, we're like, we refer you to Israel, which was a line that popped up in my press
00:26:49.200
People don't generally brag about their wireless companies, but what if you have something to
00:26:52.560
brag about? Imagine that your wireless company was so great that you told random people about
00:26:57.260
it. That could actually happen with PureTalk. Their service is amazing. It comes from exactly
00:27:01.880
the same cell towers as the other companies. So it's just as good literally, but for a fraction
00:27:06.980
of the price and maybe more important, PureTalk has actual American values. They just forgave
00:27:11.940
$10 million in veteran debt, giving away a thousand American flags to veterans. That's
00:27:16.980
not how corporate America tends to act to put it mildly. They've also raised almost half
00:27:21.540
a million dollars to prevent veteran suicide. So there are decent people working there and
00:27:27.380
a great 5G network. You've got unlimited talk, tax, plenty of data, just $25 a month, a month.
00:27:34.700
That saves the average family over $1,000 a year. It's time to switch your wireless company,
00:27:40.680
PureTalk. Go to puretalk.com slash Tucker, save an additional 50% off your first month. Again,
00:27:45.640
puretalk.com slash Tucker to make the switch today. It is wireless. You might actually brag about it.
00:27:50.660
You may have noticed this is a great country with bad food. Our food supply is rotten. It didn't
00:27:57.280
used to be this way. Take chips, for example. You may recall a time when crushing a bag of chips
00:28:02.820
didn't make you feel hungover, like you couldn't get out of bed the next day. And the change, of
00:28:09.160
course, is chemicals. There's all kinds of crap they're putting in this food that should not be
00:28:13.820
in your body. Seed oils, for example. Now, even one serving of your standard American chip brand
00:28:19.920
can make you feel bloated, fat, totally passive and out of it. But there is a better way. It's
00:28:27.720
called masa chips. They're delicious. Got a whole garage full of them. They're healthy. They taste
00:28:33.380
great. And they have three simple ingredients, corn, salt, and 100% grass-fed beef tallow. No garbage,
00:28:41.460
no seed oils. What a relief. And you feel the difference when you eat them, as we often do.
00:28:46.400
Snacking on masa chips is not like eating the garbage that you buy at convenience stores. You
00:28:52.020
feel satisfied, light, energetic, not sluggish. Tens of thousands of happy people eat masa chips. It's
00:29:00.580
endorsed by people who understand health. It's well worth a try. Go to masa, M-A-S-A chips.com
00:29:06.340
slash Tucker. Use the code Tucker for 25% off your first order. That's masa chips.com
00:29:11.800
Tucker. Code Tucker for 25% off your first order. Highly recommended. Everyone wants to feel safe in
00:29:19.620
an increasingly dangerous world. And for most of history, people assume that good locks and a loud
00:29:24.760
alarm system are enough to do the trick, but they are not. The more time that passes, the more stories
00:29:29.440
we hear about actual home break-ins, home invasions that happen despite these tools being in place.
00:29:36.000
True security requires more than that. And that's why we trust SimpliSafe. SimpliSafe is a
00:29:40.980
preemptive security system. It prevents home invasions before they happen rather than just
00:29:46.180
scaring people away once they show up at your house or they're in your house. It's cameras and
00:29:50.460
live monitoring agents detect suspicious activities around your home. If someone's lurking there,
00:29:55.200
they engage in real time. They activate spotlights. They can even alert the police who will show up.
00:30:00.240
It's been called the best security system of 2025. Over 4 million Americans trust SimpliSafe to keep
00:30:05.440
them safe. Monitoring plans start at about a dollar a day. There's a 60-day money-back guarantee.
00:30:10.980
Visit SimpliSafe, S-I-M-P-L-I-Safe.com slash Tucker to get 50% off a new system with professional
00:30:18.780
monitoring plan. Your first month is free. That's SimpliSafe.com slash Tucker. There is no safe
00:30:25.640
like SimpliSafe. Preemptive safety. Out. So we don't have a position on it.
00:30:31.060
Right. And that came up on any topic that was somewhat sensitive or waiting for Israel to make
00:30:40.020
a move. Does the State Department have any position that contradicts the position of the
00:30:44.300
Israeli government that you're aware of? No. I think the closest, I think for U.S. interest,
00:30:53.920
we do. But in our current policy and posture, we do not. So- Not one. The closest we got-
00:31:02.960
Do you love them? I love them. Do you have any sticking points with them? Is there something
00:31:08.740
Exactly. Exactly. So loving someone or having an alliance with someone or even like sharing the
00:31:15.040
same parents as somebody doesn't mean that you have to agree on every little point.
00:31:24.320
This is getting a little weird. Why is it acting like this? It's very strange.
00:31:27.780
Um, and I, the closest we came and there was no follow through with, was when, uh, I actually
00:31:36.740
liked the statement. It was a thousand other things that I had personal issues, which was
00:31:41.060
irrelevant. But Ambassador Huckabee, when there was like these, these tie bit attacks against
00:31:44.560
the Christians in West Bank, he did put out a statement saying, these attacks are unacceptable.
00:31:48.300
We call on Israel to investigate, but there's no follow through, right?
00:31:55.160
There's no follow, yeah. There's no, there's no follow through. And like, you're like,
00:31:58.340
oh, that's a good statement. That's, I'm like, wow.
00:32:00.580
You can't attack Christians with U.S. tax dollars. Sorry.
00:32:06.620
And it was, it was just a, it was one statement and then there was no like, and if we got questions
00:32:10.820
like, hey, what's the status of the investigation? We refer you to Israel, right? So-
00:32:16.360
So no one at the State Department looked into it?
00:32:19.440
Well, this is a majority Christian country, but nobody felt like that would be a good
00:32:25.320
use of American tax dollars to find out what this was or ask anybody any questions.
00:32:29.360
And that's the thing. Each time there's a call for investigation, a very rare opportunity
00:32:32.860
that that's in front of us, there's no follow through. The strong statement, we did the thing
00:32:38.220
and you don't hear about it for, for weeks and months.
00:32:41.580
So there's no one at the State Department who cared?
00:32:43.020
Look, I don't want to speak for the entire, I mean, I think there were people that cared.
00:32:51.580
There are civil servants or political appointees, foreign service officers that see, see all
00:32:56.380
of this and they're, and they're concerned. And, but it's the, it's, it's this style of
00:33:02.740
constantly deferring to Israel that's at the forefront. So we can criticize up to a certain
00:33:08.940
point. And it's awful because if we want Israel to investigate, then we should be following
00:33:18.620
up and ask, Hey, what happened to the investigation? I thought you were going to investigate. Where's
00:33:21.180
the, where are the prosecutions? Who, who did all the damage?
00:33:27.680
But we'd never hear the, we'd never hear the follow up.
00:33:29.900
So there's no, as far as you're aware, mechanism in the State Department to, because you've
00:33:36.140
described a relationship that's unique. There's no other country in the world that has this
00:33:40.680
relationship with the United States. And a lot of resources go into supporting that
00:33:45.300
country, but there's no mechanism in the United States, in the U.S. State Department to like
00:33:51.680
Look, on, in the public realm, because I was working, I work as a press officer, right?
00:33:59.100
So I'm always working with reporters and how, like this, the presentation, those things
00:34:02.700
matter. So if there was a system of following up, I didn't see it. It's possible. Personally,
00:34:13.900
Well, if they followed up, you would have known about it because what if somebody asks
00:34:17.140
Right. And you would think that if there was follow up, you'd want to advertise it too.
00:34:21.780
Like, Hey, we followed up. But they were, they were, the preference was to defer and deflect
00:34:29.940
Nobody gives a shit. You persecute, you know, Christians with American tax dollars. Nobody
00:34:37.340
Sorry. You're making me mad. No, it's just a frustrating, it's frustrating.
00:34:42.500
It's frustrating to see people get shat, because it's not a, it's not a neutral situation.
00:34:46.060
Like some people are winning and some people are losing. And if the losers are people that
00:34:51.300
you, you know, didn't do anything wrong, the Christians aren't in Hamas. Like what, what's,
00:34:56.800
Look, the scenes, the scenes are horrific. So on a human level, it shouldn't matter. But
00:35:01.660
if that's the whole thing of having Ambassador Al could be there, it's like, at least maybe
00:35:06.120
you'll care about this. And then, yeah, you put a strong statement out, but don't follow
00:35:10.400
Yeah. Right. The, the self-described Christians don't care at all about the Christians.
00:35:14.480
And by the way, the whole justification for all of this, you just said it, these journalists
00:35:18.340
get blown up. They were Hamas. Okay. End of conversation. No one can plausibly claim that
00:35:24.620
a Christian family are in Hamas. Okay. So like what, tell me, you can't claim that they're
00:35:29.960
in Hamas while simultaneously claiming that Hamas is a, you know, group of jihadis. They're
00:35:36.100
Islamic extremists, which they also claim constantly, which I don't, I don't know if
00:35:40.020
that's true, by the way, it seems more like a political organization, but whatever it is,
00:35:43.200
they're telling us constantly they're Al-Qaeda. So it can't also be true that Christians are
00:35:50.260
So then we know they're not in Hamas. So why did they get killed? Why was their church
00:35:54.300
blown up? Why were they killed in that hospital? Like, what is this? And there's not one person
00:35:57.840
in the State Department who cares enough to get to the bottom of that question.
00:36:01.040
Yeah. And all you saw, I mean, all I saw, President Trump did call Prime Minister Netanyahu
00:36:05.760
and Netanyahu gave an apology for the church that was attacked in Gaza.
00:36:11.780
But there's, there's never follow-up. There's never like, hey, we, this, this is the prosecution.
00:36:16.560
This is where our investigation landed. It's this quick two-hour brush on the rug, put a
00:36:23.100
statement out, and then you don't hear anything ever again.
00:36:27.620
Yeah. Wow. Okay. The third example of work that you produced that your superiors were unhappy
00:36:38.720
with and that led ultimately to your firing was what?
00:36:41.080
So it was a Tuesday. So that's a press guidance day of all the sample questions. It was actually
00:36:46.540
arguably, um, we, we said OBE, which meant overcome by events, which means that we're like
00:36:53.060
beyond its relevancy, but like it was still could have come up. So I put it, I left it in
00:36:57.660
there was a reaction to Speaker Johnson visiting the settlements in the West Bank. And, um, I had
00:37:06.600
a line pretty standard and kind of not, not very specific, but it said we support stability
00:37:14.780
Yeah. We support stability. That's all. So, and the, the last, well, the last piece was
00:37:19.540
comma, um, which helps secure Israel. Right. But the, I think the stable comment was, I don't
00:37:27.460
know, too much. Cause if we say we want to stable West Bank, are we accidentally being critical
00:37:32.260
of something Speaker Johnson or Israel is doing? Right. So.
00:37:36.580
What is that? I flesh that out if you don't mind.
00:37:39.380
I mean, I know, I know what you're saying, but I'm not sure everyone knows.
00:37:43.620
So why would the U.S. government, so the U.S. government is against extending condolences
00:37:52.120
And the U.S. government is also now in favor of the forced movement of large populations
00:38:00.180
Right. Okay. And now you're saying the U.S. government is against stability.
00:38:05.540
How are we against stability? Why is stability a bad thing?
00:38:08.360
Now, stability is a word that's used a lot. And we are on paper saying we support stability
00:38:13.280
in the region all the time. But in this specific context, when discussing settlements, it will
00:38:18.840
sound like we're critiquing Israel indirectly by saying we support stability in reaction to
00:38:25.660
a question about settlements. Right. So that was how I interpreted the issue.
00:38:29.820
So in other words, that would, you might be suggesting that the U.S. government opposes
00:38:38.000
Right. Right. Now I have this line, again, just like the forced displacement, it had cleared
00:38:42.840
previously. But this is where what was discussed when this first broke my firing in the Washington
00:38:50.260
Post was that senior officials from Embassy Jerusalem, David Milstein specifically, would
00:38:57.280
occasionally pop into my docs. Now, it didn't happen every single day.
00:39:01.280
Like at a Google Doc, right? Or it wasn't a Google Doc. It was, I don't know, the brand
00:39:08.480
Yeah. An internal system. I would share it with, in the morning, the equities I was mentioning,
00:39:16.380
Okay. So an equity, just for State Department speak, people haven't heard it, tell us what
00:39:24.920
And Embassy Jerusalem does, obviously, because they're the ones that are-
00:39:32.900
On those press briefing days, I would share it with them for them to review the document
00:39:37.580
and be like, okay, these are our press lines for these sample questions. Are you okay with
00:39:41.680
them? Now, it was interesting because they often did not clear, they didn't reject it.
00:39:47.280
They just, with a non-response, because the press officers there would defer up the chain
00:39:52.320
to David Milstein and Ambassador Huckabee, because they didn't want to put their name on it.
00:39:57.400
Because if it's something they didn't like, no one wants their name on a press guidance
00:40:00.940
that wasn't approved by these influential people.
00:40:05.080
He is the senior advisor to Ambassador Huckabee.
00:40:13.720
He's a, from my understanding, he's a political.
00:40:22.080
And he is the stepson of your best friend, Mark Levin.
00:40:34.220
So every head of household wants to keep the family safe.
00:40:41.460
Now, conventional wisdom suggests that a standard alarm that goes off during a break-in is enough.
00:40:52.080
You don't want people in your house in the first place.
00:40:55.120
True security means preventing that before it begins.
00:40:59.940
The system is designed to be proactive, not reactive.
00:41:04.880
They use smart cameras to identify anything lurking outside your home.
00:41:08.760
If there is something lurking outside your home,
00:41:10.880
they immediately alert professional monitoring agents who intervene in real time
00:41:15.480
through two-way audio, confronting the intruder,
00:41:18.080
triggering sirens and spotlights, and requesting rapid police dispatch.
00:41:22.740
All helping to stop the intruder while he's outside your home,
00:41:30.360
And that's why 4 million Americans use it every day.
00:41:33.640
With a 60-day money-back guarantee and no long-term contract,
00:41:36.660
Simply Safe earns your business by keeping you safe and satisfied every day.
00:41:39.680
Visit simplysafe.com slash Tucker to claim 50% off a new system.
00:41:48.840
So David Milstein is a political guy working now for Mike Huckabee in Jerusalem,
00:41:58.080
Now, on paper, he could be, but the way that he would edit my docs as aggressively as he would,
00:42:09.880
and we can get into this, but the other statements and pieces that were reported in the Washington Post,
00:42:16.020
he would push a certain agenda that was very aligned with Israel that I found very problematic.
00:42:20.820
Now, in this specific example, because we're discussing the third example of why I was fired,
00:42:25.580
was that he changed the stability line to, we commend Speaker Johnson for visiting Judea and Samaria.
00:42:45.180
It's about Israel's land grab of the West Bank.
00:42:49.580
Are Judea and Samaria, like, administrative districts?
00:42:57.980
Okay, so there's no actual place called Judea and Samaria.
00:43:01.700
Like, the civil authorities don't recognize Judea or Samaria.
00:43:05.760
It's the more extreme wing of the elements of the Israeli government,
00:43:10.640
and David Milstein was in line with that language,
00:43:15.660
and it's designed to erase any paucity and legitimacy that this is supposed to be Israeli land.
00:43:22.840
So the point is, by using those terms, they're biblical terms,
00:43:26.580
they refer to regions described in what Christians call the Old Testament,
00:43:29.780
and the point is to remind everybody that this land was promised by God
00:43:37.280
and that, you know, anyone who's lived there subsequently for the last 3,000 years has no right to it.
00:43:42.360
That's the point, but from a sort of government perspective,
00:43:48.920
Judea and Samaria are not real places in that they're not—
00:43:54.580
Not nation-states, they're not provinces, they're not—
00:44:06.120
It opens the door to more land grabs, you know?
00:44:08.880
Okay, but if a place doesn't have a clearly defined border,
00:44:13.640
then how can the U.S. government refer to it in any kind of official capacity?
00:44:21.240
And it's scary, too, because if you look at the airstrikes that Israel are doing,
00:44:26.580
and they're building settlements even outside the Golan Heights,
00:44:34.360
this idea of a greater Israel that people are discussing that was beyond these borders.
00:44:38.460
So it's scary, and it's against the stability of the region that we've been calling for
00:44:47.720
definitely since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918,
00:44:52.260
you know, you've had clear borders between countries.
00:44:54.920
In fact, we're fighting a war against Russia right now
00:44:56.820
on the premise that they violated those borders by moving into eastern Ukraine.
00:45:00.420
So, like, the U.S. government takes borders very seriously,
00:45:06.100
But as a matter of, like, statecraft and diplomacy,
00:45:10.820
So you would never use a phrase in an official communication
00:45:15.440
that referred to a place whose territory you couldn't define.
00:45:30.820
you say, it's almost like you're making this up,
00:45:45.360
because I even accepted most of his edits in the document
00:45:49.400
because going to battle with him was a whole headache
00:45:57.720
David Milstein's phone call was not a favorite thing for folks.
00:46:03.100
Tell us for those of us who don't work with Mark Levin's stepson at the State Department.
00:46:20.980
in order for him to push the agenda of any given day.
00:46:24.580
And this is something that I dealt with since very early.
00:46:29.500
He's just a senior advisor to Ambassador Huckabee.
00:46:32.400
—He's like an assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
00:46:36.820
Just sticking with the public reporting from Washington Post,
00:46:42.480
statements that were in the voice of Secretary Rubio,
00:46:52.500
—Yeah, like, he would go through and be like,
00:48:01.000
So even if we were discussing equities earlier,
00:48:37.480
to draft a statement on behalf of Secretary Rubio.