AUDIO: State Dept's Miller Admits to Blackballing Journalist Sam Husseini
During his viral confrontation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, journalist
repeatedly mentioned that State Department spokesman Matthew Miller had explicitly told him that he would not take his questions.In a November 4, 2024 audio recording provided to us by Sam, Miller does exactly that.
This was shortly after that day’s press briefing:
Having followed Sam's appearances at these briefings closely since 2023, we want to emphasize that Miller only confirms in that recording what was already obvious for months: that Sam was completely blackballed.
As we’ve previously noted, Miller refused to call on Sam many times throughout his tenure.
Here he is in late September of 2023, for instance, repeatedly refusing to take Sam's question about Biden's meeting with Netanyahu days earlier.
This was less than two weeks before October 7th:
Miller only called on Sam a couple times during the roughly fifteen month period after October 7, 2023, one of which was in June of 2024, when Sam asked him about Israel’s “Hannibal Directive.”
Miller was so ill-prepared to answer Sam’s “Hannibal” question that he had to resort to claiming he's never even heard of it, then quickly calling on one of his lapdogs to change the subject:
Our video of the exchange got over a million views on X, and Miller 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 hypocritical condemnation of “political violence”:
Or when he attempted 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.
People often ask why the other reporters in the room don't stick up for Sam. For some insight into the psychology of at least one of them, see this reply from Bilbassy-Charters to our thread about her assisting Miller, and our reply back to her:
In July, Sam briefly chimed in to point out another elephant in the room: Miller’s incessant smirking.
It had been widely discussed online for months…
But Sam was the one who brought it up to Miller directly. The video went extremely viral, with Sam's post about it on X getting over 41,000 likes.
“I’m sure you guys have all seen the clip now where a reporter’s like, ’You're smirking,’ ” one popular TikToker said in one of the numerous videos posted to the platform about this at the time. “Finally someone f**king says it.”
That 13-second exchange is — as seen in the video at the beginning of this article — what Miller later cited as his excuse for his policy of not calling on Sam, which had clearly existed well before that, and for completely different reasons (Sam repeatedly nailing him and Patel with hardball questions).
Here’s a transcript of their November 4 conversation:
Husseini: Have you guys ever provided, like– actual information on the Al-Shifa allegations and so on?
Miller: We’ve spoken to it on the record, yeah.
Husseini: I mean date and time, “We found Hamas, da da da da da…”?
Miller: Sam I don’t– I don’t really have much more to say to you, again, after the way you interrupted my briefing last time.
Husseini: So– so there’s a policy of not calling on me, is that it?
Miller: I have a policy of not calling people who interrupt other people’s questions to make accusations against me. Yeah, very much so.
Husseini: Uh huh. So you have a policy of not calling on me?
Miller: I– it would apply to anyone who comes in and when somebody else is asking a question starts—starts– starts lobbing accusations against me, I’m not going to call on them.
Husseini: No, there were other people’s [interjections]. I wasn’t lobbing accusations…
Miller: You were.
Husseini: …I was making an obvious observation. And you know it’s an obvious observation. And it's scandalous that you would blackball a journalist that way. It’s completely scandalous that you would blackball a journalist that way…
Miller: So, Sam, when you–
Husseini: The day before election day, you announce that–
Miller: So, Sam, when you came in here and asked questions, I used to call on you…
Husseini: Very rarely. QUITE rarely. Quite rarely…
Miller: When you come in here and interrupt and make accusations, I don’t. And that’s– that’s [inaudible].
Husseini: …And now you’re completely blackballing me.
In case you missed it, here's a video of Miller personally siccing armed “security” personnel on Sam last week when he tried to ask Blinken a few of the questions they had been systematically avoiding all year (see 0:38-1:06 in particular):
A version of this story was originally published as a thread on X. It’s also available at decensored.news. For more reporting like this, please follow Decensored News on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:
All this wouldn’t be possible if we still had real journalists.
I thought it hilarious that Blinken insisted Sam "repect the process" when the administration wouldn't respect international or US law.