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US journalist slams his ‘thuggish’ removal from war criminal Blinken’s final press conference

In his final press conference as US secretary of state on 16 January, genocide-denier and war criminal Antony Blinken ensured the removal of two journalists who challenged him on US participation in Israel’s genocide in Gaza – one of them being Sam Husseini.

Journalist Sam Husseini calls his treatment “very thuggish” and “total mafioso stuff”

Security officers manhandled veteran journalist Sam Husseini, who was brave enough to ask Blinken a number of important questions as they roughed him up:

Husseini is an independent US journalist with Jordanian-Palestinian roots. And he criticised how Department of State spokesperson Matt Miller set security personnel on him to avoid further embarrassment for Blinken, saying:

Matt Miller and the other propagandists at the State Dept would rather have visuals of me being carried out than have Blinken have to answer a few of my questions.

Speaking to fellow independent journalist Katie Halper after the events, Husseini said he didn’t expect such rough treatment, which he described as “very thuggish” and “total mafioso stuff”. And he later stressed that no major US news outlet had reached out to him about what had happened, adding:

I suspect they are desperate that the public not look at how murderous US gov policy is or think about what journalism should be.

The farewell Blinken deserved, but not according to mainstream media

Suppressed News argued that the challenges Blinken faced in his final press conference were “the farewell he deserves”. But most journalists in the room notably remained silent as security dragged Husseini away. As Thomson Reuters Foundation deputy editor-in-chief Barry Malone asked:

Did not a single other journalist protest when a colleague was being manhandled out of the room?

CNN, meanwhile, actively covered for Blinken, suggesting that it was ‘protesters‘ rather than journalists that Blinken’s team had removed from the room. The mainstream outlet also called the interventions “cringeworthy” and praised US ‘democracy’ for allowing “foreign journalists” to be there and ask questions. For CNN, apparently, genocide itself is not cringeworthy, but holding the government to account for its participation in such a crime is.

One former state department analyst even complained that Husseini’s *interruptions* marked “a new low in civility and discourse”. That this, and not the thuggish removal of a journalist for trying to hold officials accountable for their involvement in genocide, was the subject of criticism said everything about the elite’s contempt for ‘civility and discourse’.

The men who ‘smirked their way through genocide’

Independent journalist Max Blumenthal also interrupted Blinken, and was also escorted out of the room.

He highlighted Blinken’s connection to pro-Israel lobbyists:

Blinken’s step-father Samuel Pisar, for example, “thought about Israel all the time and spent a good deal of his life in support of the Jewish state”, had links to Israeli super-spy Robert Maxwell, and to Jeffrey Epstein.

Blumenthal also criticised Miller (and Blinken indirectly) for ‘smirking his way through genocide’:

And later on, he criticised CNN‘s coverage of Blinken’s final press conference, insisting:

CNN was central in manufacturing consent for the Gaza genocide, now it’s trying to insulate the author of this titanic crime from accountability

Featured image via screengrab

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.