Miller Confronted: ‘You Are Abetting Genocide and Risking Nuclear War’

At Tuesday’s press briefing, The Grayzone’s Liam Cosgrove confronted State Department spokesman Matthew Miller about US foreign policy and hypocrisy, saying in part:

“This administration has financed a genocide in Gaza for the last year, and every day you’re up there denying accountability for it… what gives you the right to lecture other countries on their moral [failings]?… People are sick of the bullshit in here… you are risking nuclear war…”

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Here’s the full transcript:

MILLER: Go ahead.

COSGROVE: Thanks. So Israel is still poised to strike Iran. And in July, Blinken said that Iran was one to two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon. So I guess for all we know they might have one by now. And meanwhile, in Ukraine they’ve struck deep within Russian territory several times, as deep as 300 miles from the border. And in that case, we don’t have to guess. We know that Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, as many as 6,000 warheads. And so one of the risks of arming militaries that are striking in the territories of nuclear powers is that one of those gets deployed and then it could escalate very quickly from there.

So it’s rarely discussed but it’s important to address that the nuclear risk is real and it could very abruptly mean the end of what humans have worked for thousands of years to collectively achieve. And us today are very lucky to live in – with the fruits of that achievement, and I just feel like we’re treating the risk kind of brazenly.

So my question for you is – we often hear in response to these concerns that well, Putin, Khamenei, they’re war criminals, they’re terrorists, as if they’re too inherently evil or immoral for us to negotiate with. But meanwhile this administration has financed a genocide in Gaza for the last year, and every day you’re up there denying accountability for it.

MILLER: Okay.

COSGROVE: So, I mean, what gives you the right to lecture other countries on their moral —

MILLER: So if you have a policy question for me, I’m happy to take it. If you want to give a speech —

COSGROVE: No. But I mean —

MILLER: — there are plenty of places in Washington where you can give a speech.

COSGROVE: Yeah. But people are sick of the bullshit in here. I mean, it is a genocide.

MILLER: Okay. I’m going to go onto —

COSGROVE: You are abetting it.

MILLER: — another question. Go ahead.

COSGROVE: And you are risking nuclear war in Ukraine for this proxy war.

MILLER: Plenty of other places to give a speech. [To another reporter] Go ahead.