It's hard being a liberal in Washington, D.C., when a Republican is president. You're angry all the time, and you don't get invited to the fancy White House parties anymore. You end up settling for thin gruel, trudging through the cold on a Wednesday night to watch Mehdi Hasan and the #Resistance all-stars validate your grievances for three hours.
Zeteo, the left-wing blog Hasan founded after the network formerly known as MSNBC fired him for anti-Semitism, is hosting a live event to commemorate the first year of Donald Trump's second term. He is joined by a pair of erstwhile media professionals—Joy Reid, formerly of MSNBC, and Jim Acosta, formerly of CNN. Like Hasan, they were also fired for being obnoxious. (Technically, Acosta "resigned" after refusing to accept a humiliating demotion.)
The vibe at the Howard Theatre is not quite as depressing as it was last year at the first (and only) installment of Acosta's post-CNN "Fire Within Tour." He had promised an evening of "fueling courage" and "igniting truth." He delivered a barrage of lame zingers and a Zoom call with Rosie O'Donnell, who insisted the 2024 election was rigged.
But it's not far off.
Zeteo gets its name from the ancient Greek term for "getting to the bottom of things"—the pretentiously highbrow equivalent of "igniting truth." The people in the audience paid to be here because they need the truth therapy, and there's nowhere else to go these days. CNN and MSNBC (or whatever it's called these days) are too right-wing, too anti-Hamas. Don't even get them started on CBS News. The Democratic Party is run by corporate sellouts, Zionist shills, and conniving anti-communists who refuse to fight.
Hasan, Reid, and Acosta are here for the paycheck. This is what they do now. They're #Resistance bloggers, the vanguard of "independent media." What a blessing it was, getting fired from their real jobs. Anyone who has ever encountered (or been) an angsty teenager will immediately recognize the "Screw you, we’re starting our own club" ethos. They go on each other's podcasts and answer endless variations of the same question: "Can you f—ing believe what Trump just f—ing did?" They agree on everything, above all on the towering scale of their personal courage. They risked their lives to be here. Such is their devotion to "zeteo."
Prem Thakker, the website's political correspondent, kicks things off by reminding the crowd this is an "exclusive event." Photos are fine, but anyone taking video will be immediately thrown out by security. He offers another reason for the gathering tonight. "I know many of us here share this sense of grief, of the things we've lost, thousands of Palestinians who have been killed," he says. "And so I want you to know today that there's space for all that grief and frustration and anger and love and joy and laughter."
Hasan, Reid, and Acosta jump right in, congratulating each other for being "ex-cable news." They can say whatever they want now without fear of reprimand. Mehdi can expose the Zionist cabal, Joy can call Stephen A. Smith a money-grubbing Uncle Tom, and Jim can lament the "nightmare" of going out to eat in Washington, D.C., and seeing a Republican in the same restaurant. On stage, Acosta recounts the horrors of covering Trump's first term, when a White House aide told him he'd been banned from bowling night.
"It's like being liberated and naked all at the same time," Acosta says of being banned from cable news. "You know, honestly, in this moment I've been, you know, I've been calling it a fucking moment, because if we're not going to use that kind of language now, when are we going to use it?" So raw, so fearless.
"Our interest is just to get the truth to the people in its unvarnished and unfiltered form," Reid says. They all agree that legacy media outlets are being "too nice" to Trump and are no longer "free." They are especially aggrieved by the state of CBS News under Bari Weiss and the right-wing antics of CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, a former MSNBC reporter who is married to a current MSNBC reporter, Katy Tur. "I'm less worried about Walter Cronkite spinning in his grave than him coming back from the dead and punching Tony [Dokoupil] in the face," Acosta quips, unvarnished.
Reid unloads on Weiss, who took over as editor in chief of CBS News in October. "The Bari Weisses of the world, who've been sitting around as failures in a New York Times newsroom and left in a huff because people couldn't stand her and she hates diversity, equity, and inclusion," she vents, unfiltered. "Everyone sees that she's just rewarded for mediocrity, for failure, and for sucking up."
Hasan concurs. "Thank God our fascists are so dumb," he riffs, uncensored. They switch gears to examine another critical truth. Scott Jennings, the conservative pundit on CNN whose highlight clips often get more views than the CNN broadcast itself, looks old for his age—probably because his soul has eroded from all the "bullshit" he spouts. "If Scott Jennings worked for me, I'd fire his ass," Acosta sneers. The theater erupts in clapter.
Acosta is overcome with nostalgia for his former employer and the so-called glory days of unbiased media. "There was a time, I think, that all of the cable networks where you know you had to tell the truth," he says. "I mean, you can have an opinion, but you had to tell the truth, and you had to do it in a respectful way." This is not intended as a joke.
Hasan does his best to steer the conversation back to Jewish malevolence, so they rant for a bit about the media's failure to call out the Gaza "genocide" before taking some questions from the audience. A woman wants to know if denouncing Israel will be a "litmus test" in the 2028 Democratic primary. Everyone agrees that it should be. When Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris are mentioned as potential candidates, the audience boos.
By the end of the Q&A session, the host and his guests appear to have satisfied the crowd by predicting that the candidate who wins the Democratic primary in 2028 will favor cutting aid to Israel, abolishing ICE, packing the Supreme Court, and nationalizing the health care industry. Debating Republicans is dismissed as a waste of time because, according to Hasan, nearly all of them are "unabashed racist, white supremacist, fascist Nazis."
Next up is Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), one of the left-wing Democrats who appeals to this crowd and is almost certainly running for president in 2028. The loudest cheer of the night comes when Hasan asks Khanna about calling for new leadership to replace Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) in the U.S. Senate. There's another big cheer when Hasan asks if Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, should step aside as well. Khanna demurs, and changes the subject to imprisoning Republicans.
"We should be keeping a list of every person in this administration who has broken the law, who has violated the law, and they need to be held accountable and they need to be prosecuted," Khanna says. "That is not vengeance. That is not retribution. That is upholding constitutional democracy." The audience loves it, but is disappointed when he stops short of saying Merrick Garland, the attorney general under former president Joe Biden, should be locked up as well.
Medea Benjamin, the obnoxious cofounder of Code Pink, gets a round of applause when she steps up to the mic to ask a question. She wants to know when Democratic politicians will stop faffing around and start showing up in Palestine to engage in "civil disobedience." Khanna says he is "certainly open" to the idea, but he clearly isn't—for obvious reasons.
Hasan wishes the congressman luck in the future, but doesn't seem to fancy Khanna's odds at the national level. "We live in a very racist country right now," he says.
