Biden’s Smirking State Department Spokeman Admits Israel’s War Crimes

Former Biden State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller now admits that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza.

In a Sky News podcast interview released on Monday, Miller—who was infamous for smirking every time he took a question on Gaza during State Department briefings in the Biden administration—said Israel is “without a doubt” committing war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

“Do you think what’s going on in Gaza now is a genocide?” asked Sky News correspondent Mark Stone.

“I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” Miller replied.”

“You wouldn’t have said that at the podium,” Stone pressed.

“Yeah, look, because when you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded that they committed war crimes, still have not concluded that,” Miller replied.

Stone said, “But your personal view is that they have—and they were while you were there.”

“Yes,” Miller said, before stumbling over his words to add a qualification. “There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes. One is if the state has pursued a policy to deliberately committing war crimes, or is acting reckless in a way that aids and abets war crimes, if the state is committing war crimes. And that I think is an open question.

“What is almost certainly not an open question is that there are individual incidents that have been war crimes where Israeli soldiers and members of the Israeli military have committed war crimes. And we do know that Israel has opened investigations. But look, we are many months into those investigations and we’re not seeing Israeli soldiers held accountable. So ultimately, in almost every major conflict, including conflicts prosecuted by democracies, you will see individual members of the military, of militaries, commit war crimes, and the way you judge a democracy is the way you hold these people accountable.”

“But Israel hasn’t,” Stone asked.

“And that’s my point, we have not yet seen them hold sufficient members of the military accountable, and I think it’s an open question whether they’re going to,” Miller said.

Miller, who served as Joe Biden’s State Department spokesperson for the last two years of his administration, spent that time defending U.S. arms sales to Israel, justifying U.S. vetoes of U.N. proposals calling for a ceasefire, and downplaying Israel’s war crimes—over and over again.

If Miller really believed that Israel was committing war crimes and could not express his true thoughts from the podium, he could have resigned from his position, like a few other brave people in the Biden administration did. But his Sky News interview reveals that he’s simply interested in avoiding blame, as Israel continues its mass starvation of Palestinians and its war crimes become even more evident to the public.

In fact, before his half-hearted admission that Israel is committing war crimes, Miller still took some time to blame protesting college students in his analysis of the situation.

“There was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the United States, and the movement of some European countries to recognize the state of Palestine—appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions, protests are appropriate—but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer, and they could get what they always wanted,” he said.

“Now, the thing that I look back on, that I will always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January [2025], when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could, could have done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was.”

What brilliant insight.

Surprise, surprise: Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s biggest operation to date was also a huge failure.

Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin reported on X Monday that ICE completed a massive month-long operation in Massachusetts in response to the state’s sanctuary policies.

Of the 1,461 arrests made as part of Operation Patriot, only 790 individuals—or roughly 54 percent—had criminal convictions or charges. Meanwhile, 277 detainees, or about 19 percent, had received final orders of removal or deportation, though it’s unclear whether there was overlap between those two groups. This disastrous sweep comes as the Trump administration sets a new quota of 3,000 ICE arrests per day, and continues to stray from its commitment to target criminals for deportation.

Fox reported that many of these arrests were so-called “collaterals,” a strange euphemism for people whose only crime was being with an ICE target at the time of arrest. Fox said that ICE had repeatedly warned sanctuary city officials that a failure to enforce immigration policies would result in collateral arrests. According to ICE’s own numbers, the agency made a minimum 394 wrongful arrests as part of Operation Patriot.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote in a post on X Monday that this latest ICE sweep was even worse than April’s Operation Tidal Wave in Florida, which previously held the record for ICE’s largest operation with a whopping 1,120 arrests.

“Wow. Just 54% of all the people arrested during this operation had a criminal record at all. That’s an even lower percent than the big Florida operation in April, where 63% had criminal history,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “ICE is expanding its dragnet even more to go after people with no criminal history.”

ICE told FOX that Operation Patriot was significantly more difficult due to a lack of cooperation from local officials, and claimed that they’d encountered “almost daily interference” from activists.

But Massachusetts officials say that ICE had failed to communicate with them. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey expressed outrage Monday after an 18-year-old student at Milford High School was arrested by ICE, just days before graduation.

“Yet again, local officials and law enforcement have been left in the dark with no heads up and no answers to their questions,” she said.

A day late and a dollar short, Donald Trump has finally responded to the violent attack in Boulder, Colorado.

Eight people were injured Sunday when a 45-year-old man allegedly attacked a peaceful protest remembering Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. The suspect, who has been identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, first fired on the crowd with a homemade flamethrower and then threw Molotov cocktails.

Mark Michalek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver field office, said that Soliman shouted, “Free Palestine!” A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X that Soliman “is illegally in our country.”

About 19 hours after the fact, Trump shared his official reaction.

“Yesterday’s horrific attack in Boulder, Colorado, WILL NOT BE TOLERATED in the United States of America,” Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social. “He came in through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly. He must go out under ‘TRUMP’ Policy. Acts of Terrorism will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law. This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland. My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible tragedy, and the Great People of Boulder, Colorado!”

According to the DHS, Soliman, an Egyptian national, entered the country on a B2 tourist visa in August 2022. He filed for asylum the next month, and his visa expired in 2023. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said that the agency was treating the case as an “act of ideologically motivated violence.”

But the DHS’s interpretation of Soliman’s time in the U.S. stretches the facts a bit (to put it mildly). Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, pointed out that it’s not clear whether Soliman was here illegally, given his asylum application.

“It’s not even fully accurate to say he was in the country illegally—despite the visa overstay,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “Because he filed for asylum before his status expired, by law he was not accruing ‘unlawful presence’ while waiting for an answer.”

About two dozen hostages are believed to be alive in Gaza. The Israeli government and Hamas are currently considering a U.S.-led proposal for a ceasefire. Both sides intend to propose amendments to the agreement.

Since the October 7 attack, Israel has killed at least 54,400 Palestinians in its relentless assault on Gaza. The majority of the victims have been civilians. Israel has also choked off almost all aid into the region.

On Monday, the Supreme refused to hear two significant cases challenging Maryland’s state-wide ban on semiautomatic rifles and other assault-style weapons like AR-15s. The court’s rejection of the cases, a somewhat surprising move for the conservative majority, means that the gun control law will stay in place—for now. The court also refused to hear a challenge to Rhode Island’s restrictions on high-capacity magazines.

Four Supreme Court justices are needed to hear a case.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion on the Maryland case, arguing that it wasn’t consistent with the Supreme Court’s conservative 2022 ruling that the right to bear arms extends outside the home, which loosened gun restrictions and caused states like Maryland and Rhode Island to enact bans like the ones being challenged in court.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the other conservative justice, wrote his own dissenting statement, calling the Maryland ban an “outlier” and positing ominously that “this court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon.”

Chinese officials tore into Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of sabotaging his own trade negotiations.

Trump claimed Friday that China had “totally violated” the terms of the 90-day tariff pause that the two countries hammered out in Geneva at the start of last month. In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump insisted he had taken a soft-handed approach to negotiations in the weeks since, but now he was done being “MR. NICE GUY!”

Trump’s comments came just hours after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was one of the principal U.S. negotiators in Switzerland, admitted on Fox News that trade talks between Beijing and Washington had “stalled.”

China hit back Monday, stating Trump’s claims that the Asian powerhouse had been withholding rare earths were “groundless.” In reality, officials said, the U.S. had “seriously damaged” the agreement by imposing restrictions on Chinese-made microchips and student visas for Chinese nationals.

“The United States had unilaterally provoked new economic and trade tensions,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. “Instead of reflecting on itself, it has made bogus accusations and unreasonably denounced China for violating the agreement.”

“If the U.S. insists on its own way and continues to damage China’s interests, China will continue to take resolute and forceful measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” the spokesperson said, without providing details of what those measures might be.

The Trump administration agreed in May to temporarily lower tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 percent from 145 percent. China agreed to reciprocate by lowering tariffs on American products to 10 percent from 125 percent.

But it’s unclear what the future of tariffs between the two nations will be. In addition to the clearly struggling trade talks, two separate courts have deemed Trump’s sweeping global tariff plan illegal. The Trump administration plans to appeal at least one of those rulings.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last week that the administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas for those with alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party as well as for any Chinese national studying in “critical fields” in the U.S. Rubio said his department would also “enhance scrutiny” of all visa applications from China, including Hong Kong.