Mehdi Hasan zeteo

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2ND 925 1025 i have no subscription?

11 21 tag izlam

zeteo} https://zeteo.com/}:}:

pension? msnbc appearances?

INVESTIG JRNL

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random egS

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AN 10 26

Zeteo reports that President Donald Trump and Republicans are “engaging in an all-out effort to challenge the results of next week’s midterm elections in a desperate campaign to cling to power” for the next two years. But sources inside the White House confirm that Trump is personally issuing the marching orders — regardless of the damage it does to American democracy. ADMIT ON AK?

“The president and the White House are steering all of this,” a Trump adviser told Zeteo.

The Trump administration is already spreading unfounded fears of noncitizen voting, in what Zeteo writers Justin Glawe and Asawin Suebsaeng describe as “selectively and vindictively targeting political opponents and liberal state leaders.” They’re also conducting arrests and threatening to criminally prosecute Democratic election officials, and they’re strong-arming the politicized Justice Department to argue in court that an election isn’t legally legitimate unless Trump’s side is the winner in it.

“To help sway the election in Republicans’ favor, the DOJ is apparently violating its own policies by attempting to interfere with how states administer elections and determine the validity of votes,” reports Zeteo. “And even as its lawsuits flounder, the Trump-Vance administration has zero intention of taking its foot off the gas between now and Election Night, and possibly beyond.”

The dark cloud looming over November consists of three scenarios that have election officials "holding their breath,” reports Zeteo. This includes the prospect of the president installing military troops or federal law enforcement in polling locations. It could also include attempts to block the certification of valid election results, either by lawsuit or by outright seizing ballots or voting machines. And Trump himself has suggested he might challenge the election victories of Democrats if Republicans are not victorious in certain elections.

“Again: Trump has refused to rule any of this out,” reports Zeteo, “and has indeed test-run preliminary versions of each authoritarian power grab.”

According to sources speaking with Zeteo, Trump is already hammering away in the background, demanding if his lieutenants and assorted hacks are “ready for different election challenges.”

Trump has already admitted his intent on the record, reports Zeteo, telling reporters that “I’m the one that said do it,” when explaining a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to proactively decertify the outcome of the race for one of Alaska’s U.S. Senate seats if a Republican is not the winner.

It does not matter that Justice Department guidelines are clear that the DOJ is not supposed to interfere with how states handle elections, according to the DOJ’s own website. But consistency is not the Trump administration’s strong suit, reports Zeteo.

DOJ spokespeople did not respond to Zeteo’s request for comment, including on details of whether or not the head of the public integrity section officially waived its own guidelines.

“Either way, the intent of the policies is clear,” Zeteo reports.

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gmail 7 26 zeteo pt 2

Leading virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen dives into what the evidence actually shows about the origins of the Covid pandemic. Spoiler alert: It's not what Trump, RFK Jr. and Gabbard are telling you

...as Tulsi Gabbard departed her role as the director of national intelligence, she released what she characterized as a bombshell reveal that former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about masterminding virology research that created SARS-CoV-2, which leaked from a lab and caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), has done the same, releasing a trove of similarly uninformative documents this week, which mostly show some of my co-authors joking around, discussing politics, and changing their minds when faced with evidence (full disclosure: they mention me in the context of complimenting my Twitter game). Paul claims this is evidence that they conspired with Fauci to help him cover up the truth about the lab leak by writing a paper for a scientific journal.

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These documents are not proof of anything besides showing that, yet again, efforts across multiple intelligence agencies and the Senate HSGAC failed to uncover any hard evidence that a “lab leak” occurred. That’s because the sole piece of evidence supporting that version of events is that the pandemic began in Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies coronaviruses. There was also a market, where live animals were sold.

This is the second part of a two-part series. In Part 1, I examined how disinformation about the “lab leak” is being weaponized to attack science and persecute scientists, including Fauci, furthering the advancement of authoritarianism and erosion of democracy in America. Part 2 discusses what the evidence actually shows about the origin of the pandemic – and none of it indicates that it started in a lab.

What Evidence?...

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GMAIL

Everyone Is Lying To You For Money’ - Actor Ben McKenzie on His New Crypto Documentary and Corporate Dems

Star of ‘The O.C.’ and ‘Gotham’ talks to Mehdi about his investigation into cryptocurrency, the ‘golden age of fraud’, and which Dems should “get the f*ck out of the party.”

Would you be surprised to find out that one of the leading investigators into the cryptocurrency industry is… a former teen heartthrob from the early 2000s TV series ‘The O.C.’?

Ben McKenziebecame famous for playing bad boy Ryan Atwood in the hit 2003 drama, but he may end up being remembered for his work investigating and speaking out against the opaque crypto industry.

Ben is the writer, director, and star of the new documentary, ‘Everyone Is Lying To You For Money’, which documents his years-long look into the scammy, fraudulent, and oftentimes criminal world of cryptocurrency. He met up with Mehdiin Washington D.C. to talk about his new film:

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Anderson Cooper’s ‘F*ck You’ to Bari Weiss

Zeteo's media newsletter, 'Ragebait,' is back with the behind the scenes of Weiss's latest blunder at CBS News, why Stephen Colbert dgaf, and the billionaire eyeing CNN who has staffers there on edge.

gmail 1 26

Is MAGA Trying To Assassinate This Anti-Trump Author?

Award-winning novelist Don Winslow speaks to Mehdi about the far-right threats that canceled part of his book tour - and also sounds off on the Democratic Party leadership’s many failures.

Mehdi Hasan and Team Zeteo

Jan 31

Don Winslow is the award-winning author behind more than 20 books. He’s also an outspoken critic of Donald Trump – so much so that he’s become a target of the MAGA base.

From online smears to death threats, the MAGA hate has become so intense that he’s had to cancel all in-person appearances on his book tour for The Final Score.

AN 1 26

President Donald Trump's administration frequently requests that the left stop using inflammatory language, accusing them of being Nazis or white supremacists. Former MSNOW host Mehdi Hasan responded that the administration should address such concerns first.

Hasan, who founded Zeteo News, wrote in a column for The Guardian on Thursday arguing that government officials with connections to extremist movements are employed in the Trump administration.

Hasan cited recent social media posts and referenced the 1978 book Which Way, Western Man by William Gayley Simpson, noting that phrases from the book have appeared in recent government communications.

A meme posted by the Department of Homeland Security regarding Greenland asks, "Which way, American man?"

Hasan argues that this phrase echoes language that has circulated on far-right internet forums. A second meme from the White House featured the caption "Which way, Greenland man?"

According to Hasan's column, official government accounts have posted content that researchers say contains imagery and language associated with extremist movements.

The Department of Labor posted a video with the caption "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage." Another Department of Labor post stated "America is for Americans."

Hasan notes that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem used the phrase "One of ours, all of yours," which Holocaust historian Page Herrlinger connected to historical references.

Hasan references White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller's speech at Charlie Kirk's memorial service. Snopes analyzed the speech and noted similarities to other historical speeches.

Dalton Henry Stout, identified as founder of the Aryan Freedom Network, stated in August: "[Trump] awakened a lot of people to the issues we've been raising for years. He's the best thing that's happened to us."

Stout added, "Our side won the election."

Hasan lists several examples throughout his column of government communications and staffing decisions he says warrant scrutiny.

In his conclusion, Hasan distinguishes between political disagreement and substantive concerns about staffing and messaging. He writes: "This is about government employees and their communications, as well as the rhetoric used in official capacity."

Read the full column here.

an 1 26

Zeteo reports two White House officials and an anonymous military source say President Donald Trump's administration privately plans to go scorched-earth if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are arrested or prosecuted for breaking the law.

“As one senior Trump administration official describes it, the mandate was clear: Don’t give an inch, and protect the accused agents ‘no matter what,’” write Zeteo correspondents Asawin Suebsaeng and Prem Thakker. “Two of the sources add that within the past year, President [Donald] Trump himself has privately said that if one of his immigration agents were ever subject to arrest or prosecuted, he and his administration could retaliate by refusing to hand over the officer, counter by federally charging Democrats or local officials with ‘obstructing’ immigration enforcement, or threaten to further cut off federal funding to the state in question.”

Trump began rolling masked ICE forces through U.S. cities last year, triggering violent arrests and harassment of local residents, often over the opposition of local leaders. Now that 43 year-old ICE agent Jonathan Ross has killed a 37 year-old mother in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the administration is already swinging into action to bar unbiased investigations into the slaying, claiming local courts and prosecutors have no jurisdiction into the murder of one of its own residents.

Administration officials say the White House and the president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, “gamed out since early last year” what to do if Democrats, or state or local prosecutors, ever moved to arrest or prosecute ICE officers or federal immigration personnel accused of crimes, even murder.

“Almost instantly after news of the fatal shooting began circulating on social media, the Trump administration and its close allies fanned out to insist to the American people that the victim had it coming, or that Democrats will only suffer more if they try to hold anyone accountable for the killing,” Zeteo reports.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quickly labeled the victim, Renee Nicole Good, a “domestic terrorist.” One anonymous military policy official told Zeteo he was surprised at “Noem so readily moving to defend the murderous ICE agent.”

“[It] never has bode well, historically, once the state stops pretending to care about some level of institutional respect and acts without regard for the public backlash,” the source told Zeteo. “Only makes me worried about what it’ll do next.”

The state of Minnesota may yet move to prosecute the ICE agent, but sources say the Trump administration is already “primed to retaliate.”

An anonymous National Guardsman told Zeteo that the ICE agent’s “weapons training, the trigger discipline is completely f—— up” but added that’s “lower down the list of issues.”

Read the Zeteo report at this link.

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YT 11 26 25 ALEX W

Runaway Country with Alex Wagner | Crooked Media

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zeteo 11 25

How would you react if you heard that a journalist visiting another country was arrested just hours after criticizing that country’s leader and foreign policy? Perhaps you would think that the journalist was visiting some authoritarian or tyrannical country, right?

Well, that was not the case last month, when British Muslim journalist Sami Hamdi was arrested by ICE agents at the San Francisco International Airport, after far-right influencers Laura Loomer and Amy Mekelburg went on an Islamophobic social media campaign against Hamdi. He was in the US on a visa and had come to speak at scheduled events but detained without much explanation and held for two weeks.

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zeteo

the ‘Prince of Darkness’ is gone.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney died at the age of 84 on Monday, his family said, surrounded by his wife and daughters.

Like fellow war criminal Slobodan Milošević, Cheney should have died alone in a prison cell at The Hague. But, like the rest of the gang behind the invasion of Iraq (George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld, et al.), Cheney never faced any legal or even political accountability for his war crimes over the past two decades. In recent years, he even became a hero in some liberal and Democratic Party circles after denouncing Donald Trump and endorsing Kamala Harris for president.

Yet the Bush-Cheney administration, between 2000 and 2008, was one of the worst in American history, overseeing skyrocketing deficits and tax cuts for the rich, the abuse of executive power and politicization of the Justice Department, the Hurricane Katrina debacle, and, of course, the global financial crisis.

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But it was the so-called “War on Terror” and the illegal invasion of Iraq, based on lies about “weapons of mass destruction,” that Cheney must be remembered for. It was Dick, more than Dubya, who was the driving force behind one of the bloodiest wars of the 21st century. Cheney was a hawkish ideologue – one of the most belligerent politicians of our lifetimes, despite dodging the Vietnam draft on multiple occasions (“I later saidhad other priorities in the sixties than military service,” he ). It was Dick, more than Dubya, who was also the unapologetic architect of America’s post-9/11 torture regime.

It is difficult to quantify just how many people are dead because of Cheney. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? The legacy media won’t tell us. They will likely engage in hagiography when it comes to covering his death because that is what the legacy media does when the powerful pass away. Reputations are laundered; careers are whitewashed; crimes are ignored.

Let us remember who Richard Bruce Cheney really was.

Below are 10 quotes from the former vice president that should define his horrific, blood-stained legacy: a litany of shameless lies and false predictions, as well as a total lack of regret or contrition......

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GMAIL 10 25

pORTLAND, Maine*– Leonard Leo, the conservative operative who built Donald Trump’s radical right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court, is spending big money to make it harder to vote in Maine, ahead of Susan Collins’s crucial reelection fight next year.

Leo is already a divisive figure in the Pine Tree State: His mansion in the Bar Harbor area has been the site of frequent protests ever since the high court’s conservatives overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal right to an abortion. Neighbors and visitors regularly decry Leo’s influence on US politics and the judiciary, much of which flows through his historic $1.6 billion dark-money slush fund.

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Serving as Trump’s first-term judicial adviser, Leo helped select three conservative justices, while his dark money network spent millions on PR campaigns supporting them. Those justices were essential in overturning Roe.

As Maine prepares for a competitive and likely ultra-expensive Senate race next year, in which Democrats will again try to unseat Collins, Maine’s Republican senator, Leo’s dark money network and his allies are bankrolling the main donor behind Question 1, a ballot measure that would change how many Maine residents participate in that election.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, tells Zeteo that Question 1 was “written by people that don’t fully understand Maine elections,” and would create “irregularities” that conflict with how elections are currently administered. “It indicates the influence of dark money and out-of-state interests in drafting the statutory changes,” she says.

‘The Core Leo Playbook’...

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Mehdi Hasan is live on Substack now: "'Ask the Editor': On Israel and Its Illegal Detention of Greta Thunberg and the Flotilla Activists"

10 25

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an 9 25

Far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist and self-described "proud Islamophobe" Laura Loomer was critical of Charlie Kirk near the end of his life. As Loomer saw it, the Turning Point USA founder wasn't pro-Donald Trump enough — even though Kirk was, in fact, an ardent Trump supporter.

In a July 13, 2025 post on X, formerly Twitter, Loomer wrote, "I don't ever want to hear @charliekirk11 claim he is pro-Trump ever again. After this weekend, I'd say he has revealed himself as political opportunist and I have had a front row seat to witness the mental gymnastics these last 10 years. Lately, Charlie has decided to behave like a charlatan, claiming to be pro-Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next."

But after his fatal shooting, Loomer called for the imprisonment of anyone who criticizes Kirk — a proposal that former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan is calling out as "fascism."

In a September 13 post on X, Loomer wrote, "I have to say, I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is, and I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they say we are. I've had enough of the Left only thinking we will defund them, prosecute them, lock them up and dismantle their power for generations to come. It just needs to happen."

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Hasan gave a forceful response to that post on September 17, tweeting, "If this isn't a call for open, violent, unadulterated fascism and authoritarianism, from a top adviser to the president, then what is it? Seriously, what the hell is it?"

Hasan isn't the only one on X who is sounding the alarm about Loomer calling for Trump to act like a "dictator."

Journalist Bastian Brauns posted, "It's already well past 10 after 12. 'I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is.' This is written by Laura Loomer, the woman who is allowed to personally whisper to Trump which 'traitors' he should fire from the government next."

Iowa-based writer Raymond Baker tweeted, "You know @LauraLoomer has never studied history nor does she understand what drives men like Stalin, Putin, Kim Jong II, Pol Pot, or Donald Trump. Authoritarian dictators are cruel and once they assume power, they no longer want or need supporters like Loomer."

Activist William Richards wrote, "Laura Loomer wants Trump to be a dictator? She wants to lock up the Left because she believes they are all violent. Mirror politics & projection is what Laura is up to! It's easily demonstrated that the Right are the purveyors of violence in our Country, not the Left.

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9 25

Black people

“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.” (source)

Black pilots

“If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like, ’Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’” (source)

Black women

“They're coming out, and they're saying, 'I'm only here because of affirmative action.' Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously." (source)

Civil rights

“We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.” (source)

Death penalty

"[Death penalties] should be public, should be quick, should be televised… I think at a certain age, it’s an initiation… At what age should you start to see public executions?" (source)

Democrats

“The Democrat Party supports everything that God hates.” (source)

Empathy

"I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage." (source)

Feminism

“Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge." (source)

Gay people

“You might want to crack open that Bible of yours. In a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture, is in Leviticus 18 is that, ‘thou shalt lay with another man shall be stoned to death.’ Just sayin’! So Miss Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19… the chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” (source)

George Floyd

“This guy was a scumbag.” (source)

Great Replacement Theory

“It's not a Great Replacement Theory, it's a Great Replacement Reality. Just this year, 3.6 million foreigners will invade America. 10-15 million will enter by the end of Joe Biden's term. Each will probably have 3-5 kids on average while native born Americans have 1.5 per couple. You are being replaced, by design.” (source)

Guns

“It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.” (source)

Jews

“Jewish donors have been the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews and now it’s coming for Jews, and they're like, ‘What on Earth happened?’ And it's not just the colleges. It's the nonprofits, it's the movies, it's Hollywood, it's all of it.” (source)

Martin Luther King Jr.

“MLK was awful. He's not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn't believe.” (source)

Muslims

“They aren’t even hiding their intentions. Muslims plan to conquer Europe by demographic replacement. Will Europe wake up in time?” (source)

Palestine

“I don’t think the place exists.” (source)

Transgender people

“You’re an abomination to God.” (source)

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no lnx gmail

Hypocritical Conservatives Are Using Charlie Kirk's Horrific Murder to Cynically Smear the Left

Have they forgotten all the Trump supporters who have killed, attacked, and threatened both prominent Democrats and opponents of this president in recent years? I haven't - and I have a list of them.

Mehdi Hasan

Sep 11

On Wednesday, we witnessed the horrific killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk while he was speaking at Utah Valley University. It was a shocking and unforgivable act of violence. At the time of writing, the shooter is still at large and the motive for the murder is unknown.

But that hasn’t stopped Kirk’s fellow conservatives and far-right influencers from weaponizing his tragic death to attack Democrats and blame ‘the left’ for all of the political violence in the United States.

Donald Trump gave an incendiary televised address in which he railed only against “radical left-wing political violence.” Elon Musk claimed “the left is the party of murder.” His fellow ‘Silicon Valley bro’ Shaun Maguire said “the Left lectured us for the last decade about the dangers of violence from the Right” but “the danger was actually on the Left.” Katie Miller, wife of far-right Stephen, accused liberals of having “blood on your hands.”

Such rhetoric from the right is as dishonest as it is dangerous.

Here are the actual facts for those with conveniently short memories.

The man who targeted and killed Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home in Minnesota in June was a Trump supporter.

The man charged with the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro in April was a Trump supporter.

The man convicted of orchestrating a series of hootings at the homes of four Democratic elected officials in New Mexico in 2022 was a Trump supporter.

The man who tried to kidnap then Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulted her husband Paul in 2022 was a Trump supporter.

The men who wanted to hang Mike Pence on Jan 6, 2021, were Trump supporters.

The man who killed the son of Obama-appointed District Judge Esther Salas in 2020 was a Trump supporter.

The men who were convicted of trying to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 were Trump supporters.

The man who sent pipe bombs to the homes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and other top Democrats in 2018 was a Trump supporter.

The man who killed left-wing activist Heather Heyer after driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville in 2017 was a Trump supporter.

There is no equivalent or even similar list of Obama or Biden supporters who have carried out murders, attempted murders, or violent attacks against Republicans or conservatives in recent years. In fact, according to statistics compiled by the ADL’s Center on Extremism, 2024 was the third year in a row in which all of the extremist-related killings in the United States were carried out by… right-wingers.

So conservatives can engage in as much faux outrage as they like over the supposed threat from ‘the left’ but the facts, as they themselves often like to say, don’t care about their feelings.

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ON FIRING

204,639 views Mar 20, 2025 #Trump #FTC #AlvaroBedoya

Democratic FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya was fired by President Trump and plans to sue the administration to reverse the dismissal. He discusses how he discovered his firing, why the Federal Trade Commission is so important in holding large companies accountable, and more.

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zetero 8/12? / 25 BEDOYA

LINA KHAN REID HOFF

23 MILLION ZUCK, FTC SUIT NOT YET DROPPED?

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gmail 8 25

This Weekend, We Saw the UK Descend Into Censorship, Brutality, and Authoritarianism

Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper's government arrested elderly protesters, a blind man using a wheelchair, and others – all in the name of providing diplomatic cover for a genocidal regime.

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8 6 26 robt reich press roll over trump attacks b/c corps greed/deals? 5 min in

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zeteo

paywall

The Stakes with John Harwood

Meet the 30-Year-Old Far-Right Provocateur Nominated by Trump to Investigate Jack Smith

Paul Ingrassia, who has defended Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate and was only admitted to the bar last year, is Donald Trump's nominee to run the all-important Office of Special Counsel.

John Harwood

Aug 05, 2025

∙ Paid

Paul Ingrassia speaks to reporters on Jan. 20, 2025. Photo by Bryan Dozier/NurPhoto/Reuters

To grasp how Donald Trump is degrading the caliber of the US government, consider his deployment of a young man named Paul Ingrassia.

Ingrassia is 30 years old. He graduated from law school three years ago.

He was admitted to the New York bar last year, but “lawyer” is not the way to think about what he does. Ingrassia is a far-right provocateur, best known for his former podcast, which published a post calling for martial law in 2020; his support for antisemitic Holocaust-denying extremists such as Nick Fuentes; his participation on the legal team of “manosphere” influencer and alleged rapist Andrew Tate, who denies any wrongdoing; his tweet calling former Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor” who belongs in the “ninth circuit of hell”; and his false but Trump-pleasing assertion that former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was ineligible to run for president in 2024.

“She should be deported if you ask me,” Ingrassia declared in late 2023.

For this record, Trump has nominated Ingrassia to run the Office of Special Counsel. That’s right: the president is asking the US Senate to place this bigoted zealot in charge of the independent legal agency tasked with protecting federal whistleblowers and enforcing prohibitions on political activity by government employees.

It says a lot about Ingrassia’s qualifications and fitness for this job that the Republican Senate committee considering the nomination postponed a committee confirmation hearing more than 10 days ago. Pliant Republican senators have confirmed nearly all Trump nominees so far.

But everything about this situation demonstrates how Trump has trashed the functioning and character of the workforce charged with enforcing the laws and protecting the interests of more than 340 million Americans.

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AN 7 25

Progressive firebrand and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan recently debated "20 far-right Republicans" as part of the Jubilee series "Surrounded." One of them went way beyond identifying as conservative and admitted to being an outright "fascist."

When Hasan asked Connor, who goes by "Pinesap" online, if he considered himself a fascist, he replied, "Yeah, I am."

Connor also told Hasan he supports "autocracy" and said, "I, frankly, don't care being called a Nazi at all."

According to the :{Daily Beast's Ewan Palmer, Connor says he was fired from his job after publicly making those statements and "has launched a fundraising page on GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding site" that has "faced criticism for hosting extremist causes."}:

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On his GiveSendGo page, Connor writes, "I'm raising money as an emergency fund and for other expenses while I look for a new job. Unfortunately, voicing fully legal traditional right-wing political views results in real consequences. This is cancel culture and political discrimination on full display."

Connor's fundraising campaign is drawing a lot of responses on X, formerly Twitter.

Attorney Ari Cohn wrote, "The pathetic grifty crybabyness of 'I said I am a fascist and lost my job, give me money' is just wild. So f—————— soft. Have fun not getting any insurance/benefits from the government because you're too busy begging for handouts instead of applying for a new job, loser."

X user Chris America mockingly posted, "OPer: I was fired for going on Jubilee and saying that I was a facist! My first amendment rights! Business: Thanks to the same GOP, we can fire you for any reason to protect ourselves. GOPer: The woke people did this to me! I need to raise money now! Grift. Grift. Grift."

X user Keith Edwards tweeted, "The literal fascist who got exposed on Jubilee has been fired from his job. Love that for him."

Edwards also wrote, "he doesn't believe in the First Amendment, so."

Another user Stanislav Birko posted, "This loser coming out as fascist on television thanks to Hasan and then raising more than 20 grand (seemingly in much less than a day) due to getting fired perfectly encapsulates the political moment we are living in."

X user Kennedy Pivnick wrote, "Ok but the actual answer is that unless he worked for the government or a company running a company town, no it isn't First Amendment stuff."

Similarly, Rob Braun posted, "First Amendment protects your right to free speech, he won’t be arrested or jailed. But most states are at will employment and can fire you for any reason they see fit."

*Watch the Mehdi Hasan video below or at this link.

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deflect rubber reverse false equiv

an 7 25

One of the nation’s most prominent civil rights attorneys is denouncing Fox News co-host Greg Gutfeld’s attempt to normalize the word “Nazi,” diminish its horrific meaning, and strip it of the weight it carries. And she’s asking why so few seem outraged by his remarks.

“This is why the criticism doesn’t matter to us when you call us Nazis. ‘Nazi this,’ and ‘Nazi that,’ Gutfeld declared on Tuesday (video below) during the cable network’s show, “The Five,” in a segment where the chyron read: “Dems Smear ICE With Nazi Comparisons.”

“You know what? I’ve said this before,” he continued. “We need to learn from the Blacks — the way they were able to remove the power from the N word by using it. So, from now on, it’s, ‘What up my Nazi?’ ‘Hey, hey, what up, my Nazi?’ ‘Hey, what’s hanging my Nazi?'”

Sherrilyn Ifill, the civil rights attorney, Professor of Law, and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wondered where Americans’ outrage had gone.

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“Just loathsome,” Ifill wrote. “I know it’s old school, but is there no demand that Fox fire him? Losing his microphone should be the minimum.”

Others also responded.

Progressive media outlet The Tennessee Holler called Gutfeld’s remarks “One of the most tone deaf and problematic 30 seconds of TV in our history right here. This will be tough to beat.”

The Lincoln Project responded, “So they’re just fully comfortable calling themselves Nazis now. Got it.”

The House Homeland Security Committee Democrats weighed in, writing: “Greg Gutfeld is an unwatchable racist clown.”

Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo News, wrote: “These quotes, even if said in jest, would destroy the careers of any other journalist on any other mainstream national media platform. But Fox doesn’t employ journalists and doesn’t have any journalistic (or decency) standards.”

Dr. Travis L. Stokes, Ed.D., as part of a lengthy response, wrote: “Let me get this straight: you’re comparing the Black community’s centuries-long, survival-forged, trauma-laden, complex reclamation of the n-word—a term born from slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, police brutality, redlining, mass incarceration, and generational trauma—to you and your little Fox News clowns tossing around ‘Nazi’ like it’s a TikTok trend?”

Philosopher, historian, and activist, Dr. Émile P. Torres called it, “The normalization of Nazism. Happening in realtime.”

This is not the first time Gutfeld has faced backlash for remarks invoking Nazism or the Holocaust. Two years ago, Gutfeld was rebuked for comments he made about Jews, the Holocaust, and Nazis.

“Officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland have criticized Fox News host Greg Gutfeld for saying on air that Jewish people survived Nazi concentration camps by being ‘useful’,” NBC News reported at the time.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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an 12 24

Mehdi Hasan rips Nikki Haley over Biden jab: 'You hated Trump'

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an 12 24

We speak with journalist Mehdi Hasan, founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, about the incoming U.S. administration and President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for key roles, including lawyer Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump reportedly considered Patel for FBI deputy director during his first term but dropped the idea after pushback from within his own administration. Hasan describes Patel as a “toady” whose threats against political opponents and journalists should be disqualifying, but that he aligns with Trump’s goals of further politicizing the FBI. “He wants to use it as an instrument of vengeance.”

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AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi, let’s talk about Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to head the FBI. This is Kash Patel speaking to Steve Bannon in his War Room podcast.

KASH PATEL: We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice. And, Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators, because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Kash Patel speaking on the Shawn Ryan Show in September.

KASH PATEL: The FBI’s footprint has gotten so frickin’ big, and the biggest problem the FBI has had has come out of its intel shops. I’d break that component out of it. I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops. Go be cops. Go chase down murderers and rapists and drug dealers and violent offenders. What do you need 7,000 people there for? Same thing with DOJ. What are all these people doing here? Looking for their next government promotion. Looking for their next fancy government title. Looking for their parachute out of government. So, while you’re bringing in the right people, you also have to shrink government.

AMY GOODMAN: So, again, that’s Kash Patel. When President Trump wanted to make him deputy director of the FBI in his first administration, the attorney general, Bob [sic] Barr said, “Over my” — Bill Barr said, “Over my dead body.” Mehdi Hasan?

MEHDI HASAN: Yes, he did. Bill Barr, of all people, said the guy was completely unqualified, it was detached from reality to try and put him in the FBI. And he said, “Over my dead body.” Gina Haspel, who was director of the CIA in December 2020 during Trump’s lame duck, when Trump tried to appoint Kash Patel to deputy director of the CIA, she threatened to resign, and Mike Pence had to get involved and block that. So this is not some kind of liberal whining about Kash Patel. Prominent conservatives at the time said, “No way. This guy is completely unqualified.”

:{:{And you played that clip from the War Room, from the Steve Bannon show. I think that’s from December 2023. He put us on notice. He says in that clip, “We’re putting you on notice.” Well, we’re on notice. In fact, I’ve been warning about Kash Patel since 2022, when I predicted — when I was at MSNBC, and I predicted that Trump would make him FBI director, and he would go after the media. He’s making it very clear. He wants to prosecute journalists. In another time and era, Amy, those words would be chilling. }:

Those words would disqualify him from the running. But, of course, Republican senators mostly will fall in line. We’ll see if the — you know, the Murkowskis and the Susan Collinses and Mitch McConnell, whether they’ll push back in the way they did on Matt Gaetz. He’s a deeply dangerous nominee. I would argue that clip you played from the Bannon War Room show makes him perhaps the most dangerous nominee so far, because he’s open about the fact that he wants to use the power of the state to crush Donald Trump’s opponents. He’s a sycophant. He’s a bag carrier. He literally wrote a children’s book about King Donald Trump. That’s how sycophantic he is.}:

And I would say to some of the progressives maybe watching your show this morning, Amy Goodman, who say, “Well, you know what? The FBI does need reform. We on the left don’t like the FBI. We think Kash Patel should go break it up,” well, look, you can not like the FBI, for good reason, but the only reason Kash Patel and the Republicans don’t like the FBI is because the FBI investigated Donald Trump over ties to Russia and because the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago and searched his home for stolen classified documents which he was keeping against the law in his home. So, they don’t actually care about reform or bureaucracy or deep state; they care about neutering all institutions that can stand up to Donald Trump and MAGA.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go more deeply into what he said in Bannon’s War Room, “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens.” If you could explain more who you think he’s talking about, about Joe Biden rigging presidential elections, “We’re going to come after you,” Mehdi?

MEHDI HASAN: So, Patel is at the core of pretty much every major MAGA conspiracy theory about the deep state, about the election, if you go through the list. I mean, he came to prominence — he was a very junior, as I say, unqualified person. He was working on the House Intelligence Committee with Devin Nunes, the right-wing California congressman. And he came to prominence in going after Robert Mueller, going after the Russian investigation, coming up with this memo that — some of the stuff in this famous Nunes memo turned out to be true, some of it, the inspector general said, “No, not true.” That’s how he caught Trump’s attention. That’s how he ended up in the White House. That’s how he ended up on the National Security Council.

By the way, one of the many people saying he shouldn’t be given this job is John Bolton, his former boss — not exactly a kind of lily-livered liberal — John Bolton saying he should be rejected by the Senate 100 to 0.

But he’s at the core of every conspiracy theory, Amy, whether it’s about, you know, Donald Trump didn’t lose the election, whether it’s January 6th. He testified in a Colorado courtroom over January 6th and the election. The judge said he wasn’t a credible witness. He’s even had the endorsement, I think you mentioned in the intro, of QAnon. In one of the books he wrote, he actually handwrote a QAnon mantra into the book, and they just posted it on social media. By the way, the FBI regards QAnon as a domestic terror threat. Think about the irony, Amy, of putting a person in charge of the FBI who’s actually fine with this group that the FBI thinks is a domestic terror threat. So, he is at the core of all these conspiracies.

When he says he’s going after people — you asked me who he’s talking about — of course he’s talking about the Bidens and Clintons of this world, but actually it’s much more dangerous than that. It’s much broader than that. It’s anyone who they think — who they think is an opponent. I mean, let’s just be very — this is what authoritarianism looks like. I know it’s become fashionable since the election, even on parts of the left, to say, “Well, it was all exaggerated to say that Trump is a fascist threat to the Constitution or authoritarian threat to the media.” No, it’s not exaggerated. These people are saying it out loud, and Trump is appointing them or trying to appoint them to the most senior positions in the United States government and national security apparatus.

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk about who he would be replacing, Christopher Wray, whose term doesn’t end for several years, who was appointed by Donald Trump, and why an FBI director has a 10-year term, which goes back to, what, post-Watergate, when a president, Nixon, is trying to deploy his FBI director exactly in the way Kash Patel threatens to do.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, so, of course —

AMY GOODMAN: So that they would span several terms.

MEHDI HASAN: Well, we know that J. Edgar Hoover was the man who abused more FBI power than any director in the history of the FBI. I think he was in charge — for what? Four decades? Five decades? Astonishing amount of time. No president dared to remove him. And the 10-year terms comes in after that, of course. By the way, I would credit my former MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown, who said appointing Kash Patel to the FBI director’s job would be like appointing a cross between J. Edgar Hoover and Alex Jones, which I think sums up pretty well who Patel is.

But, look, on the 10-year term, what’s interesting, Amy, is, of course, Donald Trump is the great precedent breaker, the great norm buster. When I hear Democrats talking about norms, Trump has already trashed all of them. In Trump one, in Trump term one, he got rid of James Comey, who, of course, he was angry at, even though James Comey, arguably, helped him win the 2016 election. But he got rid of Comey and put in Wray. And that itself was quite unprecedented, only the second time, I believe, an FBI director had been fired and replaced in the middle of their term. He appointed Wray. Then he got upset with Wray. Now he wants to replace Wray.

I would also make a side point to some of the progressives watching at home. Why is it that the FBI director is always a Republican, even under Democratic presidencies? It’s always a Republican. And Democratic presidents always keep on the Republican who the previous Republican appointed, which I just find so ironic.

But now he wants to get rid of Wray, put in Patel, which tells you, again, everything that he wants from the FBI. He wanted to use it as an instrument of vengeance, of score settling, of silencing dissent. He wants to use it to basically intimidate people. And that’s why he’s getting rid of Wray, not because he disagrees with Wray’s politics. Christopher Wray is a Republican who Trump appointed. But in this Trump term, he’s made it very clear what he wants the FBI to be doing.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about another of Trump’s picks. The New Yorker magazine’s Jane Mayer has an explosive piece in the magazine. Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was forced out of leadership roles at two veterans organizations for misusing funds, sexually harassing women, being repeatedly drunk on the job. According to a whistleblower report, Hegseth once had to be restrained from joining strippers on the stage at a strip club. In another incident, he drunkenly chanted “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!” at a bar in 2015. Meanwhile, The New York Timesreports Hegseth’s own mother accused him of a mistreating women. In 2018, Penelope Hegseth wrote him an email that read in part, quote, “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” unquote. The email was sent a year after a woman accused Hegseth of raping her at a California hotel. This is Trump’s pick to head the Defense Department. Your final comments on this, Mehdi Hasan?

MEHDI HASAN: So, Amy, if you had asked me this a few weeks ago, I would have said, “Hegseth is the worst pick of all. You can’t get worse than Hegseth.” And then we got Tulsi Gabbard, and I said, “You can’t get worse than Gabbard.” And then we got RFK Jr., and I said, “You can’t get worse than RFK Jr.” Now we’ve got Kash Patel, and I’m telling you, “You can’t get worse than Kash Patel.” Donald Trump says “hold my beer” every time and keeps producing these nominees.

And look, while we’re focused on Patel, we’ve got more reporting on Hegseth. I mean, it’s astonishing. It’s almost beyond belief. If you were writing a TV show about the Trump years, if it was a Netflix show called The Trump Years, you would say these storylines are just too unrealistic. If you were sitting in the writers’ room, and you said, “You know what? Let’s have a scene where it turns out that Hegseth, the great Christian nationalist, tried to get on stage with strippers. Let’s have his mother write him a letter saying, 'I disown you because of all, you know, your misogyny,'” you would say, “Oh, come on. That’s a little unrealistic. Those are kind of beyond-parody characters.” No, it’s real life. This is the Trump administration. These are the people he’s appointing.

And I think it’s interesting, by the way, the Islamophobia is very worrying on Hegseth’s part, because there was this strain of thinking, even on some parts of the left, that, well, Trump won’t be as militaristic and belligerent as the Democrats. Not true. He’s putting in a guy at Defense Department who has crusader tattoos on his body, who said outrageous things about killing Muslims, supported the Iraq War. He’s going to be in charge of the Pentagon? You know, there’s no way this is going to be a, quote-unquote, antiwar presidency, if Hegseth is at the Pentagon and Marco Rubio is at the State Department. By the way, can you imagine, Amy, if Biden or Obama had a nominee who had been accused of screaming drunkenly “Kill Jews! Kill all Jews!”? It would be the end of the world. But, of course, with Muslims, no one cares, so this will be a minor story in the résumé of Peter Hegseth.

One last point, very quickly, is Hegseth’s mother is attacking him. Elon Musk’s daughter is attacking him. Bill Barr is attacking Kash Patel. Donald Trump was called Adolf Hitler by JD Vance. When people say, “Oh, liberals are deranged about Trump people,” it’s always other Republicans who are actually leading the charge and reminding us how awful these people are.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, it’s other Republicans who would have to approve these —

MEHDI HASAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — appointees, these nominations, unless —

MEHDI HASAN: Many of them will.

AMY GOODMAN: — this is done in a recess appointment. Twenty seconds, Mehdi.

MEHDI HASAN: Many of them will, Amy. They all roll over. They’re intimidated by Trump. A lot of them are scared to go against Trump. And it comes down to, basically, you know, the four who stopped Gaetz: Mitch McConnell, Murkowski, Collins and the new Utah replacement for Mitt Romney whose name I forget. But those four Republicans are basically the ones everyone’s going to look at and say, “Are you going to stand up for the Constitution? Are you going to stand against this unqualified nominee, Kash Patel; this dangerous nominee, Peter Hegseth; RFK Jr., who kids could die because of?” Let’s see.

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, I want to thank you for being with us, editor-in-chief of the new media website Zeteo.

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an 11 24

One common theme of 2024 election postmortems is that Vice President Kamala Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump because her campaign was too far-left. Zeteo News editor-in-chief and CEO Mehdi Hasan took issue with that argument.

In a video posted to X, Hasan tore into Democratic establishment figures like James Carville and Adam Jentleson who said the "far left" was holding the Democratic Party "hostage." He blasted headlines in major media outlets like the Washington Post that read: Harris defeat is a stinging verdict for the left," and a New York Times op-ed titled: "When will Democrats learn to say no?"

"Are you f—ing kidding me? This is gaslighting of Trumpian proportions," Hasan said.

"There was nothing 'left wing' about Harris. I mean, the centrists literally got the presidential candidate they wanted: A tough-on-crime prosecutor who bragged about owning a gun and spoke about her love for a 'lethal' military," he continued. "A candidate who famously told migrants: 'Don't come to this country.'" And, during the one and only presidential debate, attacked Trump for not backing a bipartisan and very draconian border security bill."

Hasan went on to bash arguments that the vice president's campaign was too left-wing "ridiculous," "detached from reality" and "demonstrably and obviously false." He noted that she didn't once use the phrase "Latinx" or "defund the police" on the campaign stump, and "barely said anything about transgender rights." And he noted that in 2020, when "defund the police" was a more common saying, Democrats won the White House.

"It's as clear as day. Harris did not run a left-wing campaign. She didn't run on Medicare for All. She didn't run on student debt relief. She didn't run on a Green New Deal. And she didn't break with Joe Biden on Gaza," he said. "So when you say she ran 'left,' what on earth are you talking about?"

"This is a presidential candidate who campaigned way more with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban than with AOC and Shawn Fain. Who listened to her brother-in-law, the chief legal officer of Uber, than to Bernie Sanders," Hasan added. "The truth is, in 2016 and again in 2020, the Democratic establishment united to block Bernie Sanders, an actual leftist, from becoming their nominee. And in 2024, due to Joe Biden's stubbornness, they didn't even have a contest, just a coronation."

"So look, the centrists, the moderates, got their candidate in every single election in which the Republicans nominated Donald Trump: 2016, Hillary Clinton. 2020, Joe Biden. 2024, Kamala Harris. And they lost to Trump two out of three times," he concluded. "And now they're going to blame the left for that? No f—ing way."

Watch Hasan's full video below, or by clicking this link.

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mma 10 24

October 28, 2024, edition of CNN's CNNNewsNight with Abby Phillip

MEHDI HASAN (GUEST): My problem is -- I get it, nobody wants to be called Nazis, it's very inflammatory. But if you don't want to be called Nazis, stop doing --

[CROSSTALK]

RYAN GIRDUSKY (GUEST): You got called an antisemite more than anyone else at this table. People sit there and --

HASAN: Yeah, by you.

GIRDUSKY: By me? I never called you an antisemite. I mean, I'm not sitting here saying I don't --

HASAN: I'm in support of the Palestinians so I'm used to it.

GIRDUSKY: Yeah, well, I hope your beeper doesn't go off. The thing is is that --

HASAN: Did you just say I should die?

GIRDUSKY: No, no --

HASAN: Did you just say I should be killed live on CNN?

GIRDUSKY: No, I did not say that.

HASAN: Did your guest just say I should be killed?

ABBY PHILLIP (HOST): Hold on. Let me --

...

PHILLIP: Ryan, that is completely --

HASAN: Good job, CNN --

PHILLIP: -- that is completely out of pocket. You know that.

HASAN: -- first block, say the Muslim guy should be blown up on TV.

GIRDUSKY: Then I apologize, then I apologize, then I apologize.

HASAN: Wow.

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rww10/29/2024

Kyle Mantyla

Kiera Butler @ Mother Jones: For Four Hours, Christians in Georgia Gathered to Worship Trump. I Was There.

Their flex today turned out to be a four-hour marathon of praise music, speakers, and a lengthy intermission before Trump arrived. The extensive speaker lineup included several superstars of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) a growing charismatic movement led by a loose network of apostles and prophets who believe Christians are called to take over the government.

Hannah Allam @ The Washington Post: In a race they cast as good vs. evil, Christian hard-liners are fired up for Trump

Christian nationalist tours timed to the election showcase the power and ambition of a movement aimed at erasing the separation between church and state.

Dan Ladden-Hall @ The Daily Beast: Steve Bannon Released From Prison Under Cover of Darkness

Steve Bannon was released from a federal prison in the predawn hours of Tuesday morning after completing his four-month sentence.

Karim Zidan @ Sports Politika: In The Red Corner

A three-part audio series exploring the controversial alliance between Donald Trump and the UFC, and it's profound impact on America's socio-political landscape.

Matthew Sheffield @ Flux: CNN’s Ryan Girdusky fiasco is part of a much bigger problem in mainstream media

By obsessively trying to have ‘balanced’ discussions, mainstream television news keeps platforming extremists.

Matt Gertz @ Media Matters: Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook to crush the free press in a second term

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, the fate of the U.S. press may rest on whether corporate executives who control mammoth multimedia conglomerates are willing to prioritize the journalistic credibility of the news outlets they oversee over their own business interests.

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an 9 24

'That doesn’t make any sense': Mehdi Hasan celebrated for on-air takedown of Jill Stein

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Laura Loomer: People like Mehdi Hasan “need to be purged from this country” or else “we're gonna have another 9/11 on steroids”}:

:{:{02/02/24}:

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an 12 23

as part of their Project 2025 agenda, Donald Trump's MAGA allies have — according to reports in the New York Times, the Washington Post and Axios — been thinking long and hard about the type of MAGA Republicans they would like to include in a second Trump Administration if he wins the 2024 GOP presidential nomination and goes on to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election. The idea of Project 2025 is to give the United States' federal government a thorough MAGA makeover and make sure that only devout, unquestioning loyalists are hired.

MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan has been slamming Project 2025 as a dangerous recipe for far-right authoritarianism. During a recent broadcast, the progressive host cited "unhinged" GOP attorney Mike Davis as a troubling example. Donald Trump Jr. and "War Room" host Steve Bannon are among the MAGA Republicans who have been touting Davis as a possible candidate for U.S. attorney general during a second Trump Administration.

To show how extreme Davis is, Hasan showed clips of him on "The Benny Show" promising that as attorney general, he would "put kids in cages" and send political opponents to "the gulag." On October 1, 2023, Davis tweeted, "The violent Black underclass is a danger to America…. We must resume the mass incarceration of these thugs. In the meantime, Americans must arm up. These monsters will kill."

Hasan told viewers, "Mike Davis is on their radar not in spite of, but because of, his unhinged rhetoric…. Mike Davis is something that the Trump Administration lacked the last time around: a skilled, even competent, veteran of Beltway legal politics and right-wing causes — one who seems keen to transform Trump's darkest fascist impulses into an actual policy agenda…. Mike Davis is super-authoritarian and as we've discussed, super competent. That makes him super dangerous."

Hasan added, however, that Davis is only one of the many "authoritarians" Trump and his loyalists would like to hire. The MSNBC host noted that according to Axios, they are hoping to install, in the federal government, a "pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents."

*Watch the full video below or at this link.

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:{:{'Outrage' after MSNBC cancels 'vital voice' Mehdi hasan -:(style="background-color:#ff8000ff"):}:** Alternet.org}:

11 23

it’s being called a “revamp,” an “overhaul,” and a “shakeup,” but media critics, journalists, and journalism experts are expressing outrage at MSNBC for its decision to cancel the weekend show anchored by Mehdi Hasan, who many see as an important voice against authoritarianism and the far-right.

Calling Hasan an “outspoken opinion host,” and “a cult favorite online for his tough interview style and impassioned monologues,” Semafor‘s Max Tani reported MSNBC “privately announced” the cancellation of Hasan’s show Thursday morning. Hasan “will become an on-camera analyst and fill-in host. The network plans to expand host Ayman Mohyeldin’s weekend program to two hours to replace Hasan’s show.”

MSNBC is also moving Jonathan Capehart’s show to 6 PM on Saturdays and Sundays, and is cancelling Yasmin Vossoughian’s weekend show.

The cable network will launch a new weekend show, “The Weekend,” which Mediaite reports “is billed as a politics and Washington-focused program. It will be hosted from Washington D.C. by MSNBC anchors Alicia Menendez, Symone Sanders-Townsend and Michael Steele on Saturdays and Sundays from 8 to 10 a.m. ET. Both Sanders-Townsend and Menendez will be leaving their weekend programs to join the new show.

“Hasan has come under fire recently over his coverage of the Gaza war, specifically from conservative critics angry over his pro-Palestinian stance,” The Daily Beast adds. “Last month, Semafor reported that Hasan was one of three Muslim broadcasters who had been quietly pulled from the anchor’s desk following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack. A network official vehemently denied Semafor’s reporting that Hasan and others had been sidelined.”

“The same criticism Hasan has received over Israel-Hamas coverage from media rivals, however, has also followed fellow Muslim-American colleagues Velshi and Mohyeldin, who have retained their shows and even seen their roles expanded. Furthermore, as Confider reported in September, the revamped weekend lineup was already being hashed out prior to the start of the conflict in Gaza.”

Many, including those who have been critical of some of Hasan’s views, are expressing anger and outrage over the cancellation of his show, and concern for the direction of corporate media in general.

“This is an outrage,” declared journalist and media critic Dan Froomkin.

“As the warning signs for authoritarianism are going off, why demote a journalist who is really good on this topic?” asked Don Moynihan, professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Wesley Lowery, now an associate professor of investigative journalism at American University, wrote on social media that Hasan “is the best on-camera newsmaker interviewer in journalism.” He suggested, “someone give him a livelier version of what Charlie Rose once did. If you vow to measure the impact of your investment based on the quality of the journalism, not ratings or clicks, I’ll EP the first season.”

“Without a doubt,” wrote former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob, who writes a newsletter on politics and the media, Hasan “has been one of the most incisive anchors on MSNBC. The cancellation of his show is an outrage — and yet another example of how major media are failing us.”

“They still have a Republican former congressman hosting a show for like six hours every morning though right?” snarked political strategist, writer, and former Media Matters executive vice president Jamison Foser.

“Wow,” exclaimed Max Burns, a Democratic strategist and columnist. Hasan “is easily one of the sharpest, toughest, best-researched interviewers working today. His back-and-forths with politicians both left and right should be models for how to do the job effectively. What a ridiculous decision.”

Burns continued, writing: “I look at bizarre news like this and think to myself, if this industry is tossing aside singular forces of journalism like Mehdi, what hope is there for anyone? Clearly doing the job well isn’t protection from corporate decisions.

Sherrilyn Ifill, the civil rights attorney, professor of law and former Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), wrote that Hasan “has shown over and over again that he is so good at his craft. His is the journalistic rigor we need in this age of misinformation, lies, and wanna be celebrities masquerading as public servants. I cannot imagine not wanting to elevate his platform.”

“Oh no,” declared David Rothkopf, the foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator, calling Hasan a “vital voice.”

“This is MSNBC’s loss. This is a cowardly move,” wrote conservative and former GOP congressman Joe Walsh, who said he and Hasan “disagree on plenty, especially with what’s happening in the Middle East. But Mehdi is an important and valuable voice. And he’s damn good at what he does. It’s so important that ALL viewpoints get heard. Bad move.”

In September Hasan “grilled” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Watch that interview below or at this link.

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an 6 23

he named baby jail etc but never asked her what policies she was specifically proud of, just said x million voted for him thus his policies must be right/popular; otoh her job is deflection

no lnx

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan on Sunday grilled indicted former President Donald Trump's final Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews about what she experienced during the tumultuous termination of Trump's presidency.

On July 21st, 2022, Matthews testified before the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, recalling that Trump's staff pleaded with him to quell the violence that erupted as lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden's 332-206 Electoral College victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Matthews quit amidst the mayhem.

"I was honored to serve in the Trump administration and proud of the policies we enacted," Matthews said in a statement at the time. "As someone who worked in the halls of Congress, I was deeply disturbed by what I saw today. I'll be stepping down from my role, effective immediately. Our nation needs a peaceful transfer of power."

READ MORE: 'He will free them all': Rick Wilson warns of mass pardons for January 6th enablers if Trump is reelected

Hasan's curiosity centered around why Matthews chose to serve under Trump in the first place:

I've gotta ask Sarah. You resigned from your position as deputy press secretary after the January 6th attack and said, your former boss is a 'threat to democracy,' which I'm glad you did and said. But Trump was accused of criminal conduct before he became president, while he was president, and obviously since he was president. And I have to ask — and I've asked this to Alyssa Farah Griffin and others who worked for Trump and have since come out against him — why couldn't you see then when you worked for him what was so clear to the rest of us? And how much regret do you have having worked for this twice-impeached-now-twice-indicted man also found liable for sexual abuse?

Matthews responded:

I think that the level of what we faced as a country with him denying the election results, and that was a fair election, and then what we faced on January 6th, which was a deadly insurrection that he helped to incite with his words. That was something that was kind of incomparable, I think, to anything else that he had done previously in his career.

Not excusing that behavior. I knew full well the kind of man he was when I went to go work for him. I certainly believed in a lot of the policies that we enacted during the Trump administration, and I'm proud of that time in being able to serve our country. But I think that I felt a duty to serve our country at the White House because I want the White House staff to be people who are of good character. And so if it wasn't someone like me or Alyssa Farah Griffin in those positions, then who would be filling them?

And that's what I'm most concerned about now, is if Donald Trump gets back into the White House, who will be staffing him there? Because I think that the type of people that he's surrounding himself with as of late clearly are encouraging his worst instincts.

Hasan dug deeper:

I understand the argument and it's a fair argument that, you know, if we are not there, there'll be worse people there, there'll be Kash Patel or whatever it is. I get that.But at the same time, do you accept the counter-argument that by being there — knowing the man he was to quote you, you know, this is a man who had called Mexicans rapists and, you know, kidnap children from their parents, told Black congresswoman to go back to where they came from — that you were complicit in that as well? That you, you, that you are gonna have to carry that around, that you did the right thing in the end, but there was a period where you were working for a man who you knew was just off the chart?

Matthews replied:

I certainly have some regrets. And you know, I think as a spokesperson for him it was a difficult job because you're not always gonna agree with a hundred percent of the things he said. And obviously, as you outlined, some of those things were very offensive to people. But, he also did have seventy-four million people vote for him in the last election. So clearly his policies were resonating with Americans. And as I've said,I'm proud of some of the policies that we enacted while I was there.

READ MORE: Chris Sununu: Trump’s 'very self-inflicted' legal trouble is not 'political'

Watch below or at this link.

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https://www.alternet.org/matt-taibbi-mocked-msnbc-host/

no lnx

journalist Matt Taibbi admitted to repeated errors in his reporting – and was left stammering – in a brutal interview segment Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”

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Hasan called out Taibbi for multiple falsehoods in Taibbi’s “Twitter Files” claims regarding the 2020 election.

“You talk a lot about the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) in the Twitter Files, which Stanford and the University of Washington founded to monitor attacks on our elections. You say some stuff about them that a lot of your critics say is not true and that affects your credibility. You say the EIP was formed in response to the government dropping its proposal for a disinformation governance board, but that’s not true: It was formed two years earlier. You suggest it was government funded, even though it wasn’t."

“You say they labeled 22 million tweets as misinformation in the runup to the 2020 vote. They didn’t,” Hasan said. “They flagged 3,000 election-misinformation tweets so you were only 21,997,000 off. You also claimed the EIP was partnered with the government cyber-security and infrastructure agency CISA to censor Twitter, but you mix up CISA, a Homeland Security agency, with Center for Internet Security – CIS – a non-profit. In fact, you added an aided an A to CIS in brackets to make that false claim. It’s just error after error.”

Taibbi admitted on air, “That was a mistake. That was an error, but the other ones aren’t.”

But Taibbi would admit on his own Twitter account that three of Hassan’s accusations were correct. (And then Taibbi then launched a tweetstorm of attacks at MSNBC for its coverage of other subjects.)

The devastation did not go unnoticed at The Bulwark. Here’s how Jonathan V. Last reported it.

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“Russia-loving, Musk errand boy Matt Taibbi went on Mehdi Hasan’s show this week. No más! Those with a humiliation kink will definitely want to watch the whole thing. Those with weak stomachs should probably pass."

“Normally I’d be against this sort of premeditated public beat-down. But here’s the thing about Taibbi: If anyone deserves it, it’s him. Because this isn’t the low-point of his career. Heck, this isn’t even his most embarrassing moment of the last year.”

Last offered this sarcastic assessment of Taibbi:

“Just another brave, anti-woke, tankie truth-teller getting targeted by the dreaded liberal media. Because truly, liberal media bias is the single most important threat facing the world.”

You can watch a portion of Hasan's interview with Taibbi below or at this link.

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msnbc MH host says only need 1 word, projection = rubber glue? ~ j6

https://www.mediamatters.org/dan-bongino/dan-bongino-says-joe-bidens-speech-independence-hall-was-incredibly-hostile-incitement

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/kyle-rittenhouse-verdict-2655766162/

many twt

Be armed, be dangerous’: Madison Cawthorn horrifies viewers with his celebration of the Rittenhouse verdict

Alex Henderson November 19, 2021

A Wisconsin jury acquitted teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse on homicide charges on Friday, and one of the far-right MAGA Republicans who is celebrating the verdict isRep. Madison Cawthorn. The North Carolina congressman is even offering the 18-year-old Rittenhouse an internship, inspiring plenty of negative reactions on Twitter.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has offered Rittenhouse an internship as well.

Cawthorne, sounding delighted, declared,"Kyle Rittenhouse is not guilty, my friends. You have a right to defend yourself. Be armed, be dangerous, and be moral." unapck this? smite thy enemies like yawh? only shoot ppl who deserve it? having a gun automatically MAKES you righteous defended of the holy const and freedumb?

Armed with an AR-15-style weapon, Rittenhouse shot three people during Black Lives Matter demonstrators, two of them fatally in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020. During his trial, the defendant maintained that he acted in self-defense — and the jury found him "not guilty."

Many observers found Cawthorn's open celebration of being "armed" and "dangerous" to be disturbing. He previously drew criticism for telling a crowd to raise their boys to "be a monster." One might argue his admonition to "be moral" softens his plea to "be dangerous," but people can do a lot damage and harm even [especially?] when they think they are morally right.

In response to the 26-year-old Cawthorn's remarks, progressiveMSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tweeted his horror. Hasan implied that Cawthorn, as a far-right Republican, gets a pass when he openly promotes violence: [imagine me or inhan telling followers to be more armed and dang; #bipartisanship?

Here are some more responses to Cawthorn's 'be armed, be dangerous" remarks:

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Misinformation machine': MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan warns 'people actually die' from believing Fox News’ 'reckless' lies

no lnx

Alex Henderson October 19, 2021

MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan, a progressive firebrand, can be delightfully blunt. And he was exactly that on Monday night, October 18, when he slammed the type of lies, distortions and misinformation that Fox News has been promoting about the COVID-19 pandemic and argued that "people actually die" from taking Fox News seriously.

Hasan, a native of the U.K. who hosts a Sunday night show on MSNBC, appeared as a guest on his colleague Chris Hayes' show on October 18 — and he discussed the death of Gen. Colin Powell, a moderate ex-Republican who served as secretary of state under President George W. Bush. Powell had died of COVID-19 earlier in the day at the age of 84; he was also battling cancer.

Powell was a very rare example of someone who died from COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated. Anti-vaxxer extremists have been claiming that Powell's death shows that vaccines don't work when in fact, the vast majority of COVID-19 "breakthrough" infections are not fatal. COVID-19 vaccines work, and they save lives.

Hasan told Hayes and liberal New York times columnist Michelle Goldberg (a fellow guest) that Fox News shamelessly promoted lies about the Iraq War just as it shamelessly promoted lies about the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Colin Powell was part of an administration that misled the American people into a war that cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives — and then today, he dies of complications from a disease that spread unchecked through America because another Republican administration misled the American people," Hasan explained. "That's the first irony. The second irony…. The Fox News role here."

Hasan went on to say that with the Iraq War, "Fox was at the center of that Republican administration propaganda campaign. A few years ago, there was a poll that came out that showed that even in 2015, 52% of Fox News viewers believed that we had found WMDs in Iraq — in 2015! — compared to 14% of MSNBC viewers, I would just point out."

Hasan continued, "So, it's very important to point out that the same lies that were told about Iraq — that were believed on a completely different level by Fox viewers compared to everyone else — the same thing on COVID. You see it with the studies done on Sean Hannity's viewers at the start of the pandemic. Again and again, Fox News is this misinformation machine. We go, 'Ha ha ha, look how silly they are. Ha ha ha, look how eccentric they are.' No, people actually die as a result of watching Fox News, whether it's going to war in Iraq or the pandemic."

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no lnx twt

'Deeply dangerous': MSNBC host reveals the history behind the GOP embrace of a deadly conspiracy theory

Mehdi Hasan // Hasan

Alex Henderson October 01, 2021

Fox News' Tucker Carlson generated considerable controversy when, on his April 8 show, he promoted the Great Replacement Theory — a racist conspiracy theory that has become prominent in white supremacist and white nationalist ideology. And almost half a year later, Carlson is still claiming that President Joe Biden and other Democrats are trying to "replace" white voters with immigrants from developing countries. MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan called Carlson out on his show this week, warning that he is promoting a claim that "gets people killed."

The progressive firebrand described the Great Replacement as a "conspiracy theory so vile, so extreme, so dangerous" that it was, in the past, avoided by mainstream conservatives and kept "on the furthest fringes of the far right."

Hasan told viewers, "What is the Great Replacement? It's a story, or a theory if you will, about liberal elites secretly changing our demographics, helping Black and Brown immigrants to invade America and replace white people. It's a white supremacist story about so-called white genocide. Scary, right? Bonkers, too. And yet, this year, Fox's Tucker Carlson came along and thought, 'Hmmm, let's bring this idea into the light to a prime-time cable audience."

The MSNBC host went on to say that the Great Replacement Theory has become a "rallying cry for the neo-Nazi far right," noting that it originated in France with white nationalist author Renaud Camus and his book "Le Grand Remplacement." And Hasan noted that a series of terrorist attacks have been carried out by White supremacists who embrace and promote that theory.

"The Great Replacement Theory gets people killed," Hasan warned. "And yet, you now have Tucker Carlson — the most influential right-wing cable news host in America — defending it, promoting it, mainstreaming it. And elected Republicans are now following in his footsteps…. Members of the GOP are now openly trafficking in neo-Nazi rhetoric."

Hasan showed clips of Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rep. Brian Babin of Texas promoting the Great Replacement Theory, arguing that "members of the GOP are now openly trafficking in neo-Nazi rhetoric" rather than simply using racist "dog whistles" like Republicans of the past. And he noted that Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has vigorously defended Carlson by explicitly promoting the Great Replacement Theory by name.

"This is how white supremacy is normalized in America today: the marriage between Rupert Murdoch's Fox and Donald Trump's GOP," Hasan warned. "And they make us numb to this stuff…. This is a deeply dangerous moment for America."

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