Newsmax chief executive Chris Ruddy, a longtime friend of Donald Trump’s, was roundly discredited by the White House communications shop last June when he went on television to warn that the president was seriously considering the politically damaging step of firing special counsel Robert Mueller.

On Friday—the morning after The New York Times reported that Trump was not merely considering it last June, he actually tried to sack Mueller, and was thwarted only when White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit if the president insisted on going forward—Ruddy was taking a victory lap of sorts.

“I don’t want to get into a pissing match with the White House press shop, but I stand by the comments I made in June that the president was considering firing Robert Mueller,” Ruddy told The Daily Beast. “I said at the time that I thought it wasn’t a good idea. I thought it was a very bad idea…I had been told by very high-ranking senior White House officials that he was seriously moving in that direction. I was not aware of the position of [Don] McGahn, but it fits into what I had heard.”