Journalists Max Blumenthal and
made national and international headlines on Thursday for attempting to ask outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken some pointed questions during his final appearance in the State Department briefing room — and getting ejected in the process.Yesterday, Decensored News published an edited video of Max's exchange, which combined footage from Max’s camera, Sam’s camera, and the State Department’s official feed. It was one of our most viral posts of all time on X.
Today, we present our must-see edit of Sam's exchange, which weaves together footage filmed by Amr Hassan Sayed,
, and others. (Video above; also on X.)Background & Context
This exchange was the culmination of many months of State Department stonewalling. Matthew Miller, Blinken’s primary spokesperson, had actually started conspicuously avoiding calling on Sam as far back as September of 2023. After October 7th and the commencement of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, he only called on Sam a couple times during the course of an entire year. Miller’s deputy, Vedant Patel, didn’t do much better. Decensored News has repeatedly documented their avoidance.
On the rare occasions that he was actually given the floor, Sam used his time to grill them about the Geneva Conventions (vis-à-vis Gaza), Israeli nukes, and the Biden administration’s machinations regarding South Africa’s genocide case against Israel and the related ICJ orders.
When Miller called on Sam in June of 2024 — the second and final time of the entire year — Sam asked him about Israel’s “Hannibal Directive”; particularly its use on October 7th and/or against US citizens. Miller was so ill-prepared to answer the question that he had to resort to claiming that he had never even heard of it. The exchange got over a million views on X, and he never called on Sam again.
At times, Sam was able to interject a question without being called on, such as when he attempted to confront Miller about the State Department’s disingenuous condemnation of “political violence,” or to question him about whether Israel had really “committed to” a “ceasefire deal” in early June, as the Biden administration was claiming at the time. On both of these occasions, other reporters in the room — Ahmed Alhazeem and Nadia Bilbassy-Charters, respectively — helped Miller box Sam out and avoid having to give him an answer.
In July, Sam briefly chimed in to pointed out another elephant in the room: Miller’s incessant smirking. It had been widely discussed online for months, but it was Sam who called him out about it in person. The video went extremely viral. In November, Miller cited the 13-second exchange an excuse for his self-admitted policy of not calling on Sam, which had clearly existed well before that, and for completely different reasons (i.e., Sam repeatedly nailing him and Patel with hardball questions that the other reporters won’t ask).
Shortly before he was dragged out of the State Department briefing room on Thursday (as seen in the video above), Sam once again tried to ask about the Geneva Convention — a question that Blinken's evasive mouthpieces had given him the runaround on for the better part of the year. Blinken himself had also refused to answer the question on the record when asked directly by Grayzone reporter Liam Cosgrove in April of 2024.
Sam’s Commentary
Sam has provided a breakdown of the various questions he attempted to ask Blinken during Thursday’s exchange. See his piece: “Why Are You Not in the Hague?”
He also appeared on
’s show for an interview about the experience, and the corporate media’s reaction to it; and on Kim Iversen’s show. He will be appearing on Glenn Greenwald’s System Update evening.This story was originally published at decensored.news. For more reporting like this, please follow Decensored News on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:
