Shahed Ghoreishi, a former State Department press officer fired in 2024 after resisting pro-Israel edits—like replacing "West Bank" with "Judea and Samaria"—exposes how David Milstein (Mark Levin’s stepson) and neoconservatives under Secretary Rubio bypassed protocol to push biased narratives. She warns of forced Palestinian displacement plans, Gaza’s 100,000–200,000 death toll, and U.S. diplomatic hypocrisy—attacking allies like the UK while ignoring their human rights records. Ghoreishi’s dismissal signals a Trump-era shift prioritizing Israeli interests over U.S. stability, risking long-term radicalization and undermining "America First" credibility. [Automatically generated summary]
I was a press officer in the Near 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.
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.
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.
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.
Like, of course, if I have a question, I'm going to go to the Israel experts at the State Department.
So if there's 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 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?
So the main day-to-day activity that I think people may not be aware of, but or 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 are tasked from the main press office 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 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 the spokesperson about two hours before she went on to the podium.
Yeah, there's no questioning like a quote that comes from 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 Envoy 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?
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, that kind of ends the conversation, right?
What was surprising, and this will go back to why when I ended up departing and 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.
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 a South Sudan.
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It was approved for about a couple of weeks before this particular question popped up because of 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 it cleared so many times.
But to be extra careful, I sent it out to the spokesperson and their staff and made sure 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.
So there's some sense to you, which I found very odd because out of the three events, I can get into the other ones, but that was like number two.
But the two days before I was fired, that Thursday and Friday, the only feedback that I got, because my bureau was confused as to why 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 to NEA, 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.
Four days later, they're asking me where I got this line that I drafted, but they cut it.
So you were paraphrasing the envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the president of the United States, Donald Trump, when you said the United States does not support forced displacement.
Like, hey, we still have some moral standing somewhere.
And when the Washington Post piece came out, like yesterday, two days ago, saying there's some plan involving the consultations of Tony Blair of moving Gazans out, 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.
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.
Because 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 am.
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 had who millions of people had watched cover the events in Gaza.
They all died.
I drafted a line, a few lines.
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.
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 going to triple check using our U.S. intelligence of who these people are, maybe, maybe, right?
I still don't agree with cutting the condolences line, but sure.
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.
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 popped up in my press guidance way too often.
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.
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 these Taiba attacks against the Christians in the West Bank, he did put out a statement saying these attacks are unacceptable.
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.
So, and the last, well, the last piece was comma, which helps secure Israel, right?
But 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?
And we are on paper saying we support stability in the region all the time.
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.
But this is where what was discussed when this first broke in my firing in the Washington Post was that senior officials from Embassy Jerusalem, David Milstein specifically, would occasionally pop into my docs.
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 it's something they didn't like, no one wants their name on a press guidance that wasn't approved by these influential people.
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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 Judea and Samaria, it's a term that is like religious.
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 anyone who's lived there subsequently for the last 3,000 years has no right to it.
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, 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 from that point, I cut it because I 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 will, David Milstein phone call was not a favorite thing for folks.
And he, sticking with the public reporting from 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.
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 the way he wanted.
He would go up, he would go either laterally or up the chain and call various people and say, hey, Ambassador Huckabee will 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 we 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.
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.
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 laser focused on getting that through.
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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 D.C., though he's an assistant.
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.
We proffer that aid at the request of Israel because Jordan is filled with refugees 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 what you thought was a sovereign nation actually doesn't belong to you.
Judea and Samaria, I mean, isn't there, I mean, it's been a long time since I'm around 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?
Now, it was him, although you're right that he does have limitations over his title, right?
He can't, an advisor to Basser 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 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 including the seventh floor management level at the State Department and had influence with people on Secretary Rubio's staff.
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.
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.
This happened, right?
And the next day, which is Wednesday, instead of like moving along, the staff asked, actually, the acting spokesperson asked to speak with David Milstein about 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 Judea and Samaria line led to the Thursday, Friday crackdown from the Secretary.
I think there was a lot happening above my head, regardless.
Just even my firing, it's like Embassy Jerusalem was contacting this guy who was 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: why did this pivot happen?
And what does this mean for Israel policy moving forward?
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 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 look, people were happy after Trump won when, like, okay, we're doing, we're getting Trump too, but we don't have John Bolton and Mike Hale 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 paid close attention to his statements and I and I really haven't.
Who gives an ambassador the green light to poke at a Allies prime minister, the UK, a true ally?
And two, like the nonchalant attitude towards the slaughter of people, both in Dresden or comparing it to what's happening in Gaza is that's not so, of course, that's not the Christian view.
You know, murdering innocents is always wrong, period.
That is damaging who does it in his foreign policy.
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.
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 DC.
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.
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.
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'm 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 on some things and diverge at other points, but they're not the same.
Why would you want to be radical on behalf of another country?
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.
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?
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 into 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.
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 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 unlike you.
I'm been a pretty, I don't vote that much, but when I vote, it's Republican, you know?
And think about the 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 winning presidential candidate said, we're not going to get, we're trying to avoid these wars and they don't follow through.
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.
There has been reporting that Israel's 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.
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.
Why are why did we lose this ability to empathize with if you think it's thrilling that a country would indiscriminately detonate explosives in people's pockets where they don't know who's holding those things, actually.
So I was there for all these moments and working alongside people with different political backgrounds.
And to know that these folks just without discussing with me, without getting to know me, without talking to me, 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.
So it turns out that YouTube is suppressing this show.
On one level, that's not surprising.
That's what they do.
But on another level, it's shocking with everything that's going on in the world right now, all the change taking place in our economy and our politics, with the wars on the cusp of fighting right now, Google has decided you should have less information rather than more.